Interview: Brandon Germany on Presuppositional Methodology

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Well hello everyone and welcome to the Reform Rookie podcast. My name is Anthony Uvino and I'm your Reform Rookie, bringing you all things

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Reformed. The goal of this channel and this podcast is to take the deep, rich truths of the

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Reformed tradition and help you see the beauty in them and the joy you'll experience in understanding them better.

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Understanding these truths will help you better know the God of the Scriptures and help us better appreciate his sovereign plan of salvation.

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Well today I'm really excited for this guest that I have. His name is Brandon Germany and he's a bright young man and an up -and -coming name in the presuppositional apologetics world.

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He does shorts on YouTube on apologetics, presuppositional apologetics, and he does debate and discussions with atheists.

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And I really can't wait to say that you saw him here first on my channel. So he and I also have something in common in that we both had a discussion with Chris May, who's an agnostic on YouTube, and we're going to get into a discussion with that.

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So with that, welcome, Brandon. Thank you for having me. Oh, no problem. Please tell us a little bit more about yourself, your family, what you do, that type of stuff.

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Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I'm over here in Oregon, in the Portland, Oregon metro area.

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I'm married to my beautiful wife. November will be six years we've been married. We have three kids, another one on the way.

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So we're very, very grateful for that. We take the commandment to be fruitful and multiply very seriously.

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So we are slowly, you know, if I can just say, as a post -millennialist,

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I really believe that having as many kids as possible is really helpful.

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You know, if the world ends in a few years, what does it matter? But Christ is establishing his kingdom. I know that's way off topic.

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I just like to throw that out. That's spot on. I'm over here in Oregon.

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Yeah. Yeah. That's that's that's me. In the last few years, I really started to get into apologetics and I fell in love with it.

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And, you know, apologetics and evangelism go hand in hand. So any any way that we can get the gospel proclamation out into the world,

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I'm going to go for it. So that's that's me in a nutshell. Amen. So, Brandon. So now.

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Yeah. Do you serve in a church? Are you part of a regular body? You know, 1689 church, what type of church do you go to?

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So out here in the Portland area, I think there's only one reformed church and I don't even know if they're still open.

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Finding reformed churches out here is very difficult. With that said, there are many conservative churches for sure.

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There's there's many churches where the preaching and teaching tends to lean reformed.

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But finding a full on reformed church is it's not going to happen out here, unfortunately.

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So the church we're serving at now, we've been there since covid. They were the only church in the area that was open.

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Nothing. Nothing was open for so long. And so we were my wife and I were like three months into covid and we're like, we got to go somewhere.

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Our church, our home church was not opening up. So we started going to this other church and it got plugged in right away.

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And we've been going there ever since. Amen. Amen. I'm glad that they kept the doors open. Worship is essential.

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And really, our church, we stayed open and we actually gained members from it because people were starving for the word of God.

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So praise God. I'm so glad that you plugged into a serious body of believers who are going to stay open regardless of what they're told from someone else.

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Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. OK, so as a first time guest, I'd like to hear your testimony, how you came to Christ and then how you came to an understanding of reformed theology and actually embraced it.

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Yeah, yeah, we could we could spend a couple hours on that alone. Out of my immediate family growing up,

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I'm the only Christian left. We were raised nominally

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Christian. You know, we wore the title, we went to church, but it was never a serious cornerstone of the family and of the family structure.

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There was never any prayer, never any scripture reading, never any serious dealing with sin.

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So much so that I remember when my mother found out that I was looking at things on the

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Internet that I wasn't supposed to. She said, are you doing this? And me being a preacher,

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I said, I'm not doing that. And that was the end of it. She said, OK. And then I spent the next, you know, however many years, you know, that's just kind of a snapshot where we were

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Christian, but it was so surface level. And now as an adult, seeing what's become of it,

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I've seen the fruit of nominal Christianity. And in today's culture, you can't be a nominal Christian and remain a

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Christian. It just doesn't work. And so but the church we went to, we went to a word of faith church.

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And they started out not so heavy on the prosperity gospel.

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But then over the years, they went more and more into it. And my family had all left the church.

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They were out doing their own thing. But I was still in this church. And they started getting more and more into the prosperity gospel, name it, claim it.

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Speaking things into existence is something that they were really big on. You know, you can speak your reality. If you have enough faith, you can get a lot of money and you can have a good life.

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It's all about your faith. And I was I was the youth pastor of this church.

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I was their drummer. I was their technical director. Like I was deep in this church. I went to word of faith conferences.

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I met with like top tier word of faith guys. I personally met Tony Cook. I personally met

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Keith Moore, like some of the top tier word of faith guys. I was I was deep in word of faith.

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And then what happened to me is I went through a just soul crushing experience where my faith was just rocked.

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And all of the things that I was taught about how if you're a Christian, good things will happen.

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Blessings upon blessings, glory to glory, only good stuff. Suddenly I started to question some of these things that that I thought were fundamental to Christianity.

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And so what I did is is I reached out to a certified Bible counselor who was not a part of word of faith.

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And he walked me through for the first time in my life, he opened up the scriptures and walked through systematically

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Romans chapter eight. All things work together for the good of those who are called by God and love

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God. And for the first time, actually hearing the scriptures preached really because in word of faith, they don't preach the scriptures.

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They preach their ideas and then they try to shoehorn the scriptures in. But for the first time hearing the scriptures speak,

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I feel like in that moment my spirit came alive to God and I wanted more and I had to learn the

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Bible. So I started reading the scriptures for myself and I started listening to MacArthur, Piper, a lot of these more reformed guys, not because they were reformed because I didn't know what reformed theology was.

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These guys were just preaching the scriptures. So I just got it towards them. And so, yeah.

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So and then I started to kind of question some of the things that were being said on Sunday morning. You know,

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I remember there was this one guest speaker who got up and he said, he said, many of you guys have been told lies your whole life.

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The lie that God is in control. God is not in control of the world. He has no control over this world.

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He gave it up to the devil and we're using our faith to fight the devil. And I'm listening to that and I'm like, there's no way that that's scriptural.

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There's no way that like, are we reading the same Bible? So a lot of the stuff is kind of going on.

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And I'm meeting with the pastors and I'm saying, hey, here's what I'm wrestling with. You know, I can't be the youth pastor in this season because here's what

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I'm going through. And it did not go well at all. They asked me and my wife to leave the church.

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And so that that was also really painful. So it was just a season of God breaking me down and rebuilding me and showing me who he is, not what not what they thought, what the word of faith preachers were trying to make him out to be.

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So all that to say, when when I started to get into reformed theology, I started to learn about James White.

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I started to learn about Jeff Durbin. And I remember I was in a Facebook group for reformed theology and somebody posted the

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Greg Bonson and Gordon Stein debate. And they said, this is the greatest debate you'll ever do.

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And I thought, OK, I'll give it a shot. And brother, let me tell you, I listened to that debate and I said to myself,

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I have to learn how to do that. I have to know how he did that. I got to learn that.

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And so I started getting all the Vantill, all the Bonson, all the White. I've listened to so much of James White.

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It's so I'm just devouring all all this reformed theology and the apologetics came naturally.

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And and the culture that I find myself in, there's so much atheism, but a weird spiritual atheism that I started to use this apologetic knowledge right away.

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And I fell in love with it. And I've just been seeking to grow ever since. Amen. Amen. I have a similar testimony in the fact that I was

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I got saved and I was coming out of Roman Catholicism and I needed to be able to give my family and friends an answer because, you know, growing up on on Long Island as an

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Italian, you know, Sundays, we're going to be arguing and eating, you know, so I started going online and this was before YouTube.

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So I found James White. I have boxes of his cassettes, boxes of his videotapes.

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And just like you, without knowing reformed theology, as he's debating, it's coming through. I'm seeing it in the scriptures.

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I'm also listening to Sproul. And it was just one of those things. I have a heart for evangelism and you're right, you know, apologetics and evangelism go hand in hand.

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So it perfectly dovetailed and very similar to you. So how did it affect your walk as a

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Christian? Yeah, yeah. Within word of faith,

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Calvinism is is the ultimate heresy. I remember when I met with the elders and the pastor of that church, they all took turns telling me that that Satan has entered my mind and I've given myself over to demons.

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And and I mean, for word of faith, they would rather you be a Satanist than be a

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Calvinist. I mean, that's how much they said. I'm not even joking. I believe I don't want to say hate, but they hate

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Calvinists. The so so going from word of faith to Calvinism was a huge jump.

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I think for me, the biggest thing that that I learned was was that God is in control, that God is sovereign.

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My whole view of Christianity switched because I was taught that that man has this power to use our faith, to control our environment and get money and get wealthy and get famous.

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But now I'm learning the call of God is self -denial.

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The call of the Bible is who have I in heaven but you and earth has nothing I desire besides you.

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So my my theology, my life was turned completely a 180 degree. So it's affected my walk in that this the sovereignty of God, I think, is the biggest thing that I had to learn and learn how to love.

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Amen. Amen. For me, it's just made me a bolder Christian. I mean,

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I know that I can't die one day sooner than he's ordained. So I want to leave it all out on the field. I want to fight the good fight, you know, no matter what he's he's you know,

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Jesus says actually, he's Deuteronomy 20. When the when the army goes out, I will be in your midst, you know, fear not go take the land.

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So I said, you know, that's the same thing as the Great Commission. I will be with you even to the end of the age.

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What are we afraid of? Like I just recently spoke at a conference and I told everybody in the council,

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I said, listen, if Jesus walked into this church right now and said, guys, let's go into the neighborhood and evangelize.

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Tell me who wouldn't go. Everybody would go. Why? Because Jesus is there.

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But we forget that when we go evangelize, Jesus is still there. He's there. You know, we need that that understanding and really take these things to heart.

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I think for me anyway, and it's a continual process. I say, I believe, I say,

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I believe, I say, I believe. And then in my actions, it doesn't come out that, you know,

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I have to say it. And if I believe it, I'm going to do it. So I've just been, you know, more proactive in that way.

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So, OK, so you started a YouTube channel for apologetics, correct?

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Kind of. Yeah, I still don't really know what I'm doing. Well, you're doing it really well.

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Well, thank you. I appreciate it. So what happened was sorry, go ahead.

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I was just going to say, how did the channel come about? Yeah, yeah.

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So what happened was I did I didn't have anything on my YouTube channel. I just used YouTube for YouTube and I was scrolling through the shorts one day and this guy popped up and he he was saying something about how, you know,

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God can't be the ultimate moral authority, because if he told you to kill, you would know that's wrong.

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And therefore, there's a moral authority outside of God. And and I thought I was reading and listening to it.

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And I was like, what is this guy talking? What is this? Why is this showing up on my feed? So I went to his channel and I saw that he's done dozens of debates.

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But they were they were all like pop culture debates. Like he's big on like the Disney stuff and Star Wars.

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And so they were all like debates within that. But for whatever reason, he decided to throw out a

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God doesn't exist video. And so I reached out to him and I said, hey, I see that you do debates.

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If you want to debate on God and morality, I'll do it with you. And I've never done anything like this.

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And so he messaged me back and he said, I'm down, let's do it. And so I went on his channel. He has like 30, 27000 subscribers.

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So I was super nervous. And we did the debate and I thought was like the funnest thing

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I've ever done in my life. It was so much fun. I loved every second of it. It was funny.

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And I learned my first debate that you always have to have water nearby because like five minutes in, I started having a coughing fit and I had to leave and get water.

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So embarrassing. But yeah, I learned that I fell in love. I fell in love with it.

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And I realized like I I can do this, you know. So I started putting some shorts out.

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And then another guy, Wes, was his name. He reached out and he said, hey, I saw you did this debate.

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I'll do one with you. So then I did one with him. And then same thing with Chris. He messaged me and he said, hey, I see that you've done a debate.

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And then we connected and he sent me your debate, which was a phenomenal debate.

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And I'm not just saying that because I'm on your channel. It was a really well done debate. And I can tell everybody I didn't pay you to say that, please.

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I have no money. It was really good. And so that's how you and I connected. And yeah, so it was never

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I never wanted to do an apologetics channel. I still don't really necessarily.

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I'm just trying to throw apologetic stuff out there right now to help someone.

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You know, if there's one person out there who can learn something or be edified or be encouraged or, you know,

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God willing, a seed of the gospel be planted. I want to I want to take those opportunities and I want to use these gifts that I've been given for something.

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So that's kind of that's kind of where I'm at right now. Amen. I love the I love the heart.

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I love the attitude. And certainly in your discussions and in your shorts, your passion and your zeal for it comes forward.

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And I'm so glad that you you you fell in love with this by accident with this this particular the first debate you did.

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So I think I really think, Brandon, you're going to you're going to grow and people are going to take notice.

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And I'm going to I'm going to see you debating some some highfalutin guy some one of these days.

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Thank you. Thank you. So now were you did you consider yourself an evidentialist, a classicalist, and then you came to Presupp or did like how did you get into the presuppositional?

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Yeah, my introduction to apologetics was through Jeff Durbin, through James White, Greg Monson.

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So so as far as apologetics goes, all I've ever really known is Presupp.

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So I'm sure that there are some classical guys, some evidential guys out there who who are way more knowledgeable in this area than I am.

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But to answer the question, no, I all I've ever known is Presupp. And now that I know of the other categories,

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I'm still going to stay Presupp. There's no way I'm going to jump ship. Right. Do you recognize that Presuppositional is distinctly reformed?

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Right. Can you tell the audience? Yeah, it's it's distinctly reformed in the sense that it has the highest view of God possible.

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Classical apologetics and evidentialism, they seek to give man a power and a right which he doesn't have and which the scriptures don't give him.

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And the the the antithesis of of man, of the of the flesh and the spirit is throughout scripture.

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And to pretend like man can please God in the flesh and interpret evidence correctly is is completely unbiblical.

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It's it's not honoring to God. If Peter tells us to sanctify Christ as Lord and then give a reason for for our faith, the evidentialists do it the opposite way.

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They pretend like maybe God doesn't exist and then they want to work their way to he does.

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And Van Tillen, in his defense of the faith, talks about this extensively about when you build up to the existence of God, you're trying to set down these facts.

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And then when you get to God, then you want to take all those facts away. That's not that's not honoring to God.

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That's that's not honoring Christ as Lord. You start with the fact that you are the creature of God and God tells you to repent for your sinful thoughts and to think his thoughts after him.

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And then we can make sense of the facts. So I hope that answers the question. You know, no, it does.

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You know, for me, I did start out as an evidentialist. I was heavily involved in apologetics.

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In fact, I was me and a buddy of mine started a ministry called New York Apologetics. I debated an atheist at the campus of Long Island University, and that was kind of like the birth of this apologetics movement here on Long Island.

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I shouldn't say the whole movement, but the birth of New York Apologetics. And we went to cross -examine

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Instructors Academy with Frank Turek and the guys and came at it from an evidentialist point of view. And then

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I then I listened to, you know, listening to James White and listening to Bonson. I started to rethink what was going on.

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And then I became good friends with Eli Al. He lived on Long Island as well. So, you know, he was someone into me.

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And when I saw it, you know, it was it was when Paul says in the wisdom of God, man does not know

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God through wisdom. It's like, wait a second, that's the exact opposite of what

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I'm thinking, you know, I'm thinking I'm going to give them enough information so that they come to the knowledge of God.

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And then the scripture says, well, all men know God. So like this was a paradigm shift for me, and as I started reading and listening to, you know, presuppositional apologetics talks, and we went through the book

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Always Ready. In fact, it's on the channel chapter by chapter. So if anybody wants to go through that,

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I'll put the playlist in the in the little box that you click on it. And then as I come to to employ it,

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I see incredible power in starting with God, right, and and arguing to the evidence, not starting with the evidence and arguing to God.

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We we place our feet on a firm foundation and argue from that. I never put my

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Bible down now, you know, back then it was, well, well, I don't believe the

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Bible. Okay, I don't need the Bible to explain God to you. This is why we have the cosmological argument.

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We have this argument, teleological argument, all good arguments, but there are arguments that the scriptures tell us those arguments, the foundation for those arguments are in the scripture.

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So be that be that as it may. I wanted to ask you for the audience, because again, this is the

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Reform Rookie channel. What is the transcendental argument and why use it?

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The transcendental argument, throw me softballs, the transcendental argument for the existence of God is is one of those things where if you ask 20 people, you're going to get 20 different questions or 20 different answers.

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The transcendental argument, as I understand it, is that you start with God, as you said, you start with God as the necessary precondition for the intelligibility of reality.

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You can insert anything in their intelligibility of morals, intelligibility for the laws of logic, intelligibility of science.

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You can you can put anything in there and God is the transcendent explanation for all of those things.

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The transcendental argument, like you said, argues from God rather than to God, whereas evidentialists and classical, in a sense, will try to argue to God using reason and evidence.

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And, you know, let's examine this historical fact over here and see if we can find God. The transcendental argument does the transcendental argument uses those, but starts with God instead of starting with those and then trying to get to God.

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More so morality, for example, when you apply the transcendental argument to morality, all humans have a moral system, atheists have a moral system, but they can't account for it.

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Even in the debate with Chris, I said, are morals transcendent? And he wouldn't answer the question.

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He was trying to work around it, but he couldn't answer it because if he said yes, then he's acknowledging that there's something above the human reality which gives meaning and light to morality.

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And if he says no, then the debate's done. So no matter how you answer it, the debate's done. Either way,

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God exists. You know, the transcendental argument is so overpowered, so insanely useful.

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It's completely, if you can employ it correctly, it's a showstopper, a hundred percent.

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Yes. Eli drilled it into my head that one of the ways you can describe the transcendental argument is what must be true in order for anything else to be true?

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Right. So when somebody says there is no such thing as truth, you say, is that true? I mean, it's self -defeating.

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So if I say, well, I was standing on the second floor of the building, well, that presupposes the first floor.

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There must be a foundation for everything that we're standing on. So when we use the laws of logic, when we use moral laws, when we use the scientific method, those things must have a foundation.

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And God is the only one who can ground all of those things transcendentally.

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He must be true in order for everything else to be true. So you're right.

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It is a game changer when you employ it correctly. Yeah. And a lot of critics of the transcendental argument will say that us presuppers, we're just assuming

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God. We're just assuming the Bible. But that's actually not true because most people don't understand the difference between an assumption and a presupposition.

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A presupposition gives meaning to a statement. Assumptions come after the statement.

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So, for example, if I said my cat ran away yesterday, you could assume the cat's black.

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You could assume it escaped through the back door. You could assume it escaped at 3 p .m.

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yesterday. You could make assumptions based on the statement, but you have to presuppose that I have a cat.

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You have to presuppose that the cat is alive. You have to presuppose that the cat has feet.

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So that's just a silly example. Well, but but it's silly. But it it that's

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I think the biggest thing that that atheists are struggling right now with is in dealing with the tag argument.

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The transcendental argument is they confuse a presupposition with an assumption.

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We all make assumptions, but we all have presuppositions. You have to have them to make intelligibility out of any statement at all.

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Right. Yeah. And that's that was one of the things that was paradigm changing for me.

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Every single human being has presuppositions and no one is neutral. You know, you have a view and you have faith in that view.

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And that's why you're you're you're going in that direction. So one of the questions that I like to ask atheists usually is, what is truth?

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And they say, well, that which corresponds to reality. And I just follow it up. I kick the can a little further down.

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I said, well, who's reality? Hitler's or Mother Teresa's? Like, you know, like how do we how do we have reality, you know?

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So, you know, I learned and just like you said before from Van Til. We're thinking

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God's thoughts after him. Right. So the the the worldview is it's

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God's worldview. This is the way he created thing. When we start with with him as the base assumption, the base presupposition, everything else falls into place.

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It it falls together like a like a jigsaw puzzle. There's nothing out of place. And when

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I'm examining someone else's worldview, I'm thinking of like a puzzle. How does this fit into his metaphysic?

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If it doesn't fit well, then it's arbitrary, inconsistent and it doesn't have a precondition of intelligibility.

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Yeah. Yeah. So how does epistemology play a role in presuppositional apologetics?

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Yeah, epistemology is directly impacted by our theology. If you assume that man in himself, like I like I said earlier, if you assume that man has an epistemology that is unhindered by Adam's fall into sin, then you have an unbiblical understanding of epistemology.

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We see in Genesis that God made man and woman and God told them, do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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And what was the first thing that the serpent attacked? He attacked their epistemology.

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He attacked, did God really say, did he really say that? You know, you know,

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Eve, you can decide for yourself if this is really bad. You don't have to you don't have to submit to God as the precondition for everything around you.

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You can decide for yourself. So epistemology plays a role in presuppositional apologetics in the fact that we don't well, one of the facts that we don't grant to the unbeliever the right to properly interpret the evidence or reality about them whatsoever.

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We start with the base assumptions, the base epistemology as low as we can get.

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And we say, how do you know what you know is true? Can you account for that?

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To quote, to quote Van Til, because he's he's just so cool. I love quoting. Yeah, yeah.

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This is this is in his books, book, Christian Apologetics. He says, Satan suggested to Eve that God's statements about the revelation of one temporal fact to another was not determinative of the nature of that relationship.

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Facts and the truth about their relationships to one another can be known by man.

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Man has to choose between taking the divine mind of his own of the divine. Excuse me, man has to choose between taking the divine mind or his own mind as the source of all truth about facts.

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See, there it is. Every time proper planning, you were ready. Yeah, yeah. So I'll give you a follow up question with that.

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So the person's going to say, well, don't we have to use our our rational, logical minds first?

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You say that I have to argue from the existence of God. But wouldn't I have to argue from my existence, then get to the existence of God and go back?

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Yeah, if you employ your mind, you are presupposing the laws of logic, you're presupposing intelligibility about the fact that the facts about you, can you account for understanding the facts correctly?

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How do you account for the facts around you? If you can't do it, then you're just believing by faith, by blind faith that you can make sense of reality.

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So if they were to say, well, I can use the scientific method and I could talk to people around the world who have the same experience as me.

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That's that's that's the way I interpret the evidence. I use the scientific method and I bounce it off other people if they can come to the same conclusion.

31:41

Well, then then that's how I know things. Yes, science presupposes uniformity of nature, which again presupposes

31:49

God, because if you assume a chance universe, then how do you know that tomorrow is going to be like the past?

31:57

How do you know that tomorrow when you turn on your stove to boil some water, it doesn't freeze the water?

32:03

Because in atheism and in skepticism, that could be true. It could be true that when you go to start your car tomorrow, it turns into a giant plate of spaghetti because because you can't you can't assume these things to be uniform in nature.

32:23

If reality is the product of chance, then how do you know epistemologically that anything has uniformity at all?

32:32

You can't account for it. Right. And so we would say at that point, you have faith that things are going to be tomorrow like they are today because you don't know where what what

32:45

I like to tell people is. Any fact is a fact because God says it's a fact, right?

32:51

God is the father of all facts. Every fact is a fact because God made it a fact.

32:57

If we have an omniscient God who knows everything and we we we have a person who stands next to God, I ask them as a person, how much knowledge do you think you have out of all the knowledge in the world?

33:13

You know, even if it's one percent, you're probably you know, you have the most knowledge of anybody.

33:19

It's much, much less than one percent of all the knowledge of everything in the world. So if I was to ask you a question and I was to ask

33:26

God a question, who's going to give me the right answer? One hundred percent of the time. God, because he knows everything.

33:33

So we have an omniscient creator who reveals things to us such that we can know them for certainty because he's omniscient, because he has all knowledge.

33:44

Think about how many times science has changed in order to adapt to the to the environment around it.

33:53

Like, oh, I give you a great example. In 2020, there was this thing going around.

33:58

I don't want to say what it is because then it's shut down. But the science told us for two years that, hey, if you if you get the cookies, then you'll be safe.

34:08

And all of a sudden, a few years later, oh, the cookies aren't safe after all. I'm sorry about the heart condition.

34:14

So science, popular science is is to be crass.

34:19

It's a joke. It's it takes so many things. For granted, there's so much blind faith involved in modern science.

34:29

It's so politicized when someone says, you know, science has proven that we don't need

34:34

God. It's like two years ago, you thought that getting something jabbed in your arm was going to save you.

34:40

And where are we now? How do you know? So that's a little throwaway there.

34:47

And I'd like to see the scientific experiment that you did to prove that God doesn't exist on on a different level.

34:53

You know, when I was growing up in like the late 70s in grammar school, you know, the big thing was the ice age.

35:00

We're going to get an ice age. Things are not going to work. It's going to be bad. And all of a sudden that faded away.

35:06

And then it turned into there's a hole in the ozone layer. You can't use aerosol cans.

35:12

The sun's going to burn us up. And then it was acid rain. And then when acid rain, it went to climate change.

35:19

And now it's it's it's constantly changing. And we went from having an ice age to be to being melted into nothing.

35:27

It's like, yeah. And the science confirmed all of this the whole time. It's so sad that people listen.

35:34

I believe that there's bonafide good scientists out there. But I think the people who fund the scientists might say, hey, listen, this is what we're looking to do.

35:43

You know, can you find any evidence that supports this? And if you're being paid by those person, no one is neutral.

35:49

All right. And if you don't have a moral compass, you don't have the

35:55

Holy Spirit living inside of you. Well, you're just going to do it to earn a living for your family. Right. Yeah.

36:00

It's almost like it's almost like people are sinful and it's almost like people employ their intellect to bolster their sin nature.

36:14

You know, it is this goes full circle. It is we as presuppositionalists don't grant that man is neutral, including in the sciences.

36:25

You can sinfully boil a pot of water for a scientific experiment.

36:32

Science. Science is a method. Science is methodology. And when methodology is employed by sinful, fallen, broken, rebellious man, you're going to get sinful, fallen, broken results.

36:47

And that's not to say that all scientific inquiries are wrong.

36:53

That is to say that all human beings are sinful. Right. From the arrow to.

36:59

So you had your discussion with Chris May and I watched it.

37:04

I think you did an excellent job. Your your demeanor is so gentle and respectful. I really have to learn from you with regarding that.

37:15

Sometimes I'm a brother. Let me tell you, that is the that is the work of my wife. When I first converted,

37:21

I should say converted when I first became a Calvinist, I was so mean. I was so mean.

37:27

And even to this day, being on social media is very dangerous for me because I I look nice and I can pretend to be nice, but I've got a lot of work to do with me still.

37:42

I'm there, too. So he who began a good work in me is faithfully completed. And you so put this way,

37:49

I would never know that watching you what you just said was true. So praise

37:55

God. He's doing a great work and we give him the glory for that. You know, our tempers, our demeanor really needs to be gentle and respectful.

38:04

I try to tell my congregation that we are on a rescue mission, right? We are not to look down our nose on anybody.

38:10

And as people who hold firmly to the doctrines of grace, you had better be the most gracious person in that conversation and not be outgraced by somebody who doesn't hold to the doctrines of grace.

38:24

You talk about the doctrines of grace, but if you don't model them in your argumentation and you're teaching them, it's not going to make a difference.

38:31

You know, they're going to say, yeah, well, that's what he says he believes, but that's not really what he employs.

38:37

You know, so when you when you debated or had the discussion with Chris May, what was some of the things that you highlighted that you thought you you really did a good job with?

38:53

I think that I did well with the philosophy aspects, which which he actually helped me out a lot because he sent me all of his debates.

39:05

So I had prep time. It was a little bit unfair in that aspect because I only had two debates leading up and he had five or six.

39:13

He had he had a bunch. So I I got to see him work. I got to see his strengths and I got to see his weaknesses.

39:20

I saw that he was very weak with the philosophical arguments. I think in your debate with him, he was the weakest, to be honest, because you employed presuppositionalism and he didn't have a good answer.

39:35

Right. He he debated some some evidentialist guys, which they well, it was it was disheartening to watch their debate because in the first five minutes they were they were bashing on you, bashing on presuppositionalists.

39:50

They're like, oh, that was insufferable. You had more patience than me. And I'm like, you you guys are ridiculous.

39:56

And Chris mopped the floor with them. I mean, just to watch them be

40:01

I don't want to get out in the weeds, but yeah, but, you know, it's so so I knew anyways,

40:08

I knew that if I stuck to the philosophical arguments, that was going to be my strongest, my strongest area.

40:16

So that really started to come out around the 50 minute mark. The first 50 minutes were just kind of back and forth, you know,

40:24

Bible says this. No, it doesn't. Here's what I think. Well, here's what I think. But then finally, when I said, OK, let me ask you,

40:30

Chris, I think that's really when the debate started. Right. To be blunt. Absolutely.

40:37

I loved. Well, let's say there's a couple of things that I had noted. You used the term final predication, right?

40:45

But when he makes a statement, he he he's not able to have predication.

40:50

I think I don't know exactly how you phrased it. What does that mean? What is final predication? A final predication essentially is who gets to determine how things connect.

41:04

If I say that barn is red, I'm predicating that the red and the barn.

41:10

And I can say I know that the barn is red because I see that the barn is red.

41:17

Well, what is red? Well, I know that red is a color. Well, what's a color? Well, a color is this.

41:23

And I know this and I know that I know that that when I start my car tomorrow, it's going to start and it's going to run because it's always worked that way.

41:33

I know that the sun will rise in the morning because it's that's what I was getting at is that if we as human beings are the final point of predication, that is, whatever is true is true because we know it's true, then

41:51

I can say as a human being that the scriptures are true and therefore they are true.

41:59

And then the natural response is, well, that's just your opinion. Well, then I say it's just your opinion that the sun's going to rise tomorrow.

42:07

If we are the final point of predication, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. If it is true that the sun will rise tomorrow, then it is also true that the scriptures are true and authoritative.

42:18

If man is the final point, then the scriptures are true because me as a man, I get to say that the scriptures are true.

42:25

So that was kind of the argument that I was making there. OK, so let me ask you this, especially for the listeners.

42:30

How would you go about substantiating the scriptures as the word of God, not using an evidential?

42:39

What would be your way to convey to them why you hold to the scriptures being true?

42:46

Without using evidentialism, I would say that God spoke,

42:53

I would use, I would go to Hebrews 1 that God spoke through the prophets long ago. But in these last days, he has spoke through his son,

43:01

Jesus Christ. I would say I would also say that men spoke by God as they were carried along by the holy scriptures.

43:11

I would also say that the scriptures are theanoustas, they are God breathed and they are profitable for reproof, instruction, correcting and teaching.

43:20

I would say that that how do we know what

43:25

God has said apart from his revealing it to us?

43:31

When God says this is my scripture and the scripture says this is God breathed, this is theanoustas, we don't have anything else to rely on.

43:43

I could I could write down a piece of paper that says this is God speaking, kill your neighbor.

43:49

But how would we know that that's how would we know that that's not God breathed? Well, it's not

43:54

God breathed because and then we would start to get into the evidence we could get into. This is kind of what

44:00

James White does, his approaches. Then he starts to get into the risen tomb. Then we start to get into fulfilled prophecy.

44:07

We could we could look at the scriptures and say and say, who else has risen from the grave?

44:13

Who else has had fulfilled prophecy? Who else has had two thousand years of consistent

44:18

Christianity? So at that point, we can start to weave in the evidence to bolster it.

44:27

But at the end of the day, the strict let me get a drink before I say this, because this one's going to be good.

44:34

I promise the strictly precept answer would also be that all reasoning is circular.

44:45

We believe that the Bible is true because the Bible is the word of God. Well, that's circular reasoning. You can't say that.

44:50

OK, so how do you know that the scriptures are not the word of God? OK, well, the scriptures aren't the word of God because I don't think they're the word of God, because I find them to have hold in them.

45:01

Oh, so you're the final point of predication. Yeah. OK, well, I think that the scriptures are the final point of predication.

45:08

What what atheists and agnostics and skeptics don't understand is that all reasoning, all reasoning is circular, all of it.

45:17

You if you start with man knows everything that there is to know and man can interpret everything that there is to know.

45:25

And therefore, he he looks at the scriptures and decides that they're wrong. Then he goes right back to himself and says the scriptures are wrong because I know that the scriptures are wrong.

45:34

We as Christians say that we submit to the scriptures and we say God created us.

45:39

And then we look at the world around us and we see the uniformity of nature. We see that God is the precondition for the intelligibility of reality.

45:49

And then we come back to the scriptures and say, wow, the scriptures say that God created us, that God is the precondition for the intelligibility of reality, that we are to submit to him.

45:58

Therefore, we submit to him. Would you use the term self -attesting? Definitely, yeah, yeah, the scriptures are self -attesting.

46:07

And the inner witness of the Holy Spirit? Yeah, oh, definitely. Yeah, absolutely.

46:13

Those are those are pivotal. All right, because usually when you're when you're talking to a skeptic, be it an atheist or someone else, they say, well, you're you're you're you're taking the scriptures by faith.

46:28

We use logic and reason. You know, when you use the scriptures to prove the scriptures, you know, that's circular, but we use logic and reason.

46:35

So my question is, well, how did you how can you prove to me that logic and reason are your standard, but you're not allowed to use logic and reason to come to that conclusion?

46:48

Yeah, you know, it's self -defeating when they put it like that. I also

46:53

I'm glad you brought that up. I also would challenge them and say if the scriptures were to appeal to something other than the scriptures, then that other thing then becomes authoritative.

47:07

At some point, you have to have a final authority. The final authority is God breathe.

47:13

It is they are new stuff we don't we don't have another. The scriptures don't give us something else to point to other than the

47:21

God breathed written revelation that is the Holy Scriptures. Right. I love in Hebrews when when

47:27

God wants to swear an oath, he could swear by none higher than himself. God, like he's the authority is nothing he's appealing to.

47:35

So the buck stops with him. You know, I love that one. So, OK, you you when you talk with Chris, he didn't understand he didn't seem to understand what divine command is.

47:47

Can you explain to the audience what that is? Yeah, divine command, simply put, is when

47:55

God commands something that is authoritative for us. So when God says thou shalt not kill.

48:01

That is a divine command that we are supposed to follow. And. He seemed to not understand from my vantage point, he did not seem to understand the creator creation distinction.

48:19

In other words. We aren't we wouldn't be able to issue a command to kill someone else, but God, because he's the creator, because he's the giver of life, he can freely take it back.

48:35

And because he's written his law on everyone's hearts, they have to submit to him and his rule.

48:43

Correct. Yeah, yeah, it was a little it was a little bit frustrating in my dialogue with Chris because I did it did seem like I was kind of spinning my wheels a little bit, trying to get him to understand that, you know, when

48:59

God commands the Israelites go wipe out the Canaanites, that's a divine command.

49:05

But it's a specific divine command. And what's what's the reason for that is to render justice to a sinful, vile, evil group of people that they deserve.

49:17

And I don't think that he he quite understood it.

49:24

I don't think that he was because because even towards the end of the debate, he brought it up again. He's like, well, the Israelites plundered

49:30

Egypt. And it's like, oh, my gosh, dude, like I already answered this. You know, I can answer it again if you want.

49:35

But yeah, it was it was a little frustrating, but that's that's apologetics for you.

49:42

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think with skeptics, they get very upset. How can God why would

49:47

God allow all this evil in the world? And then when you see God issue a command to exterminate a certain people who's committing evil, how could he possibly have them wiped out?

49:58

It's like, you know, if God exercises mercy, you don't like that.

50:03

If God exercise justice, you don't like that. You just don't like God. Yeah, well, it all goes back to unbiblical anthropology.

50:11

If you believe that humans are good, innocent bystanders and big old meany,

50:19

God is just up there killing us. And we really we really feel sorry for what we did. Please don't flood the earth.

50:25

Oh, no, he flooded us. How can he do this? I really wanted to say sorry to him. But now I'm it's like that's not it's not even even if you if you just look at the

50:36

Bible, you see that these are rebellious people. There's nobody good. There's no good human beings.

50:43

They they what does Romans 1 tell us that these people want a desire? They desire more and more that that the vote, the most vile and the most vile in us isn't enough that these people want more and more and more.

51:00

And then just like you said, as soon as God brings the hammer down, it's like, oh, look at this big meany.

51:06

How could he do this to these good people? It's like, hey, yeah, and and the and the irony is you ask them, well, what's your objective standard for saying that?

51:17

And again, how do you how do you how do you flesh that out, Brandon? How do

51:24

I flesh out my objective standard of God issuing justice when when when when he's going back and forth or when any skeptic is going back and forth and say, well, what

51:35

God did was evil. And obviously, from a presuppositional standpoint, the question becomes, by what standard?

51:42

Right. How are you you're coming to this conclusion. You have some kind of moral framework.

51:49

How do you ground it objectively in that subject? You ground it objectively in the sense that the impossibility of the contrary demands that it be objective.

52:04

It cannot be subjective. And in the debate, this comes out a little bit as well, is that if it if the worth of mankind is subjective and is found in man himself, then that's just to say that it's conventional and then it's just made up and we just assign it arbitrarily.

52:22

And at that point, if that's true, then Hitler was a good guy and Mother Teresa was the world's biggest villain.

52:30

And if you say that's not true, then you are appealing to a standard outside of man. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.

52:38

Right, right. So they sometimes say, well, it's so obvious.

52:44

Everybody knows this is evil. And that's when I say, well, if it's so obvious, just explain it to me simply.

52:50

It can't be too hard for you to explain it if it's that easy. But obviously, they're revealing the fact that they are image bearers of God and morality is coming through, because if the universe came into existence without rationality or intentionality behind it, well, then there's no purpose for it and there's no oughts.

53:14

There's just collective preferences. You like Rocky Road. I like butter pecan.

53:20

Which one is good and evil depends on how many people vote. Right. So subjective means, you know, that the standard is outside, the standard is inside ourselves.

53:31

Objective means that the standard is outside of ourselves and is over us. And that's how we would ground, you know, an unchanging morality because it's grounded in the nature of God.

53:45

He doesn't change. He defines what's evil and what's not evil. In fact, you asked him, are ethics transcended?

53:53

So flesh out why you asked that and how he responded. Yeah, yeah,

53:59

I asked him that because I knew he couldn't answer it, which is kind of mean.

54:05

I kind of feel bad. No, no, I think I think that I think that's where you got to I think that's where you got to push, you know, not not not in a mean spirited way.

54:12

And you didn't do it mean spirited. Oh, but that's where you got to push and expose the gaping hole in his in his view.

54:19

Yeah, well, yeah, I asked it because, like I said, I knew that he could not answer it because if he says no, ethics are not transcendent, which he really wanted to say, but he didn't come right out and say it.

54:31

If he says no, ethics are not transcendent, then then I just say,

54:37

OK, then I subjectively say that the scriptures are authoritative. Therefore, they are authoritative.

54:43

And if they are transcendent, then ethics come from something other than man.

54:49

And then we're right back to where we started, that there is a creator over man. That tells man how he ought and ought not to behave.

54:58

So the question of our morals transcendent is is very difficult for atheists and skeptics to answer in a meaningful way.

55:09

Hmm. Yeah. So one of the things he responded by, he says, ethics are the result of pursuing your goals and ethics are developed using logic and reason and they're determined by your goal.

55:23

Your response was, does it matter how we achieve our goals? Like you went you went back to like, is it can we do whatever we want?

55:35

And you use the perfect illustration about trying to get A's in school. If the point if the goal is to get an

55:41

A on your paper or in your class, is it OK to cheat to do that? It's a great act.

55:47

I loved the fact that you were thinking, you know, so on your toes, you asked that question.

55:53

Tell us how how he tried to answer. Yeah, he ought to be honest with you,

56:01

Anthony. I don't even know how he answered because he was he was he was changing things up so quickly and trying to it was it was the image of God in him coming out in the fact that he couldn't answer it in a meaningful way.

56:16

I've listened to that debate, you know, lots of times and I still don't know what he believes.

56:23

You know, I never got a cohesive, you know, this is where ethics come from.

56:29

I mean, he gave his answer of they come from the goals, but he can't tell us anything more than that.

56:36

Right. So so the thing with the with the A plus and the F, I think he tried to say something about how, well, you know, if if it's if it's your goal to get an

56:50

A, then it's ethical for you to do that. But if everyone else wants to get an F, then it's ethical for them to do that.

56:57

And then my question is, OK, so that it's ethical for one person to murder and unethical for other people to murder.

57:05

And he's it's just one step away from saying that it's all relative. I mean, like just come out and say it's up to the person to decide.

57:13

It's up to me to decide if stealing, murder, pillaging is wrong.

57:18

When you say that that ethics are goal oriented, all you're saying is that ethics are relative to a goal and you just make up your goal arbitrarily as the final point of predication.

57:32

This is my goal to get more food than my neighbor. Therefore, it is ethical to steal from my neighbor.

57:37

I mean, nobody thinks like that. That's what I was trying to expose is that, you know, Chris, the image of God is in the

57:44

Imago Dei is in you. You just are suppressing it in your unrighteousness. Yes. Amen.

57:49

And in in his argumentation, all I'm hearing is like what you just said. If if your goal is to get an

57:55

F, you do this. Your goal is to get an A, you do this. Everybody's their own God. Everybody goes by their own set of morals because it's based on their own personal goals.

58:07

So I apply my own personal morals to my own personal goals and try to achieve them. Right. Machiavelli, the end justifies the beings.

58:14

Yeah, he did say I wrote this down because this was interesting and I wanted to react to interact with it.

58:20

He did say at one point during that interaction, he said, oh, because I said, can I cheat to get an

58:27

A? If it's the goal is to get an A, can I cheat to get the A since it's all about the goals?

58:34

What can I do? Whatever I want to reach the goal. So I asked him, I said, can I cheat?

58:39

And he said, no. And he said, cheating implies a breaking of rules.

58:44

It's like saying it's OK to murder. Murder by definition is wrong.

58:50

And I'm sitting there in my chair going like, dude, you just like, how can you how can you say that?

58:56

Like, OK, so ethics. So it's so it's all about the goal, but you can't do the goal wrong because that would be wrong.

59:06

You have to do the goal right because that's what's right. It's like, dude, don't you see the transcendence?

59:14

Like you literally in the statement breaking rules is wrong. Murder is wrong.

59:20

By what standard? Right. By what? Like, how do you so that for me was the biggest like, oh, my gosh, like this is the

59:27

Imago Dei in you. This is the image of God in you that you're suppressing with all these weird goals that you want to.

59:34

Yeah, that. Yeah. Yeah. My heart breaks for a guy like that because he unknowingly he's trying to break out of God's world and he can't do it.

59:46

He's he's trying because he recognizes, I think, that if there is an objective standard, he's going to be beholden to it.

59:55

And he doesn't want that. He doesn't want to behold to a standard outside himself because then he can't live the way he wants.

01:00:03

And I'm not saying that's specific. I don't know his heart. And I pray that he would come to a knowledge of the

01:00:08

Lord. But I think that's just the nature of man in general, right? Where Romans 1, God haters, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventing ways of doing evil, suppressing the knowledge of truth and unrighteousness, you know, worshiping, exchanging the glory of God and worshiping the creation rather than the creator.

01:00:26

Our lives in before God in a depraved sense are just self -centered, completely self -centered.

01:00:35

Yeah. Yeah. And I just hope that even maybe in this talk or something.

01:00:41

So when you're talking about objective morals. How do you how do you do that from a presuppositional standpoint?

01:00:50

I know we've been talking about this for a little while and I'm sure it's kind of easy for you to do, but step us through it. Yeah, you you do it by the impossibility of the contrary, especially with morals of morals.

01:01:08

Morals is a is a fun and interesting argument because it can be used by the evidentialists, the classical and the presuppositionalists.

01:01:19

And but but when you apply tag to it, that is the transcendental argument for God, when you apply transcendentalism to morals, that is to say, objective morality, you are showing that there is something above and outside an a priori to man that tells man how he ought to behave.

01:01:43

So to use this goal oriented ethics, for example, when you're creating your goals, you still have a sense of ethics.

01:01:55

That's why you can say things like you can't cheat to get the goals. You can't murder to get to your goals because there is an objective morality.

01:02:04

So we don't we as presuppositionalists don't try to use evidence to try to get to objective morality.

01:02:13

We say there is objective morality. Now, let's interact with your worldview.

01:02:18

You say goal oriented. What does it look like? Is it OK to murder to get to a goal? If not, then why?

01:02:25

How do you account for for for the morals within you? If it's relative, that is to say, if it's not objective, it's if it's up to man to decide, then then we can then we cannot say that murder is wrong.

01:02:39

We can't say that stealing is wrong. You can invent ways around it and try to add layers to it.

01:02:45

Like I just uploaded a video last week, last week or two weeks ago, where there was this woman who was saying we can use logic and reason to come up with ethics.

01:02:58

And I played the short and I interacted with it. And it's like, whose logic, whose reasoning?

01:03:05

Because according to my logic, God exists and objective morality calls us to behave as the creatures of God.

01:03:13

So I don't I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah, none of the objective morality. That's how we would go about it.

01:03:19

Yeah. So when we talk about goal oriented stuff from from his point of view, what about the serial serial killers goal to murder as many people as he likes?

01:03:30

You know, like if if you don't if you have a subjective moral standard, well, it's what

01:03:36

I like. My goal is to do this. There's no I like what you said above, outside and a priori.

01:03:44

Right. What are the serial killers? Where are they? Where are his morals? Are they above, outside and a priori?

01:03:51

No, they're inside of him because there is no universal law that says, oh, yeah, it's good to kill.

01:03:59

Yeah, yeah. And we as priests up, we as preceptors, we push that antithesis. Yes. We know that the image of God is within them.

01:04:06

God has placed eternity in the heart of man. And we push that and we push them and we show the inconsistencies.

01:04:13

Lovingly and gently as much as we can. But that's what we focus on. We say, you know that there's objective morality.

01:04:21

Now, let's let's do an internal critique of your worldview and expose the truth that's within you. Right. So how would you go about I don't think you

01:04:29

I think you were questioning, Chris, but I don't think you had the opportunity to do like a full internal critique.

01:04:35

How would you go about doing that? Yeah, yeah, I definitely did. We we had planned before the debate, we planned to only go an hour and I didn't

01:04:46

I didn't switch it up on him till the 50 minute mark. So so there was no way

01:04:51

I was going to be able to thoroughly critique him. But sorry, your question one more time.

01:04:59

Yeah. So how would you go about internally critiquing his worldview? Oh, well, yeah,

01:05:05

I would say that that as applies to ethics, when you say that goals because his worldview is that goals determine our ethics and the internal to do an internal critique, you would say,

01:05:20

OK, if goals if goals are the root cause of ethics, then you would start to interact with it and you would say, how is it that goals define our ethics?

01:05:33

And in the debate, you see me start to interact with it. And I even say how many people's goals, whose goals?

01:05:41

You know, if if if 80 percent of the school wants to get an A, but 20 percent want to get an

01:05:48

F, then then, you know, you have two conflicting goals and which one wins.

01:05:53

And is it ethical for one and unethical for another? So to do an internal critique, you're stepping into the opponent's worldview and you're interacting with it and you're bringing the

01:06:05

Bible and God to bear on the worldview. And I think that you see that in your debate with Chris and in my debate with Chris, where we were saying you believe this.

01:06:15

Have you thought about the necessary conclusions of what you believe? And not to be mean to him,

01:06:21

I think he's a brilliant guy, but I don't think that he has thought about the necessary conclusions of what he believes.

01:06:28

Right. Yeah. One of the things that I think in my talk with him that that kind of set him back for a second, it was when

01:06:36

I asked myself, what is truth? And he like he paused, he started thinking, and it really made me realize as I'm talking to, you know, unbelievers, whether they be atheists or or anything else to ask that question, like if we're going to have if we're going to have a dialogue, obviously the precondition of our dialogue is, well, we were searching for truth.

01:07:04

But if you don't know what truth is, how could you be how do you know if you hit the target?

01:07:10

Yeah, like if you can't if you can't define truth, which we had brought it up before and I didn't say it.

01:07:19

Correspondence theories, truth is is that which corresponds to reality from a presuppositional standpoint, we would say truth is that which conforms to the mind of God.

01:07:29

Right. Any God is the the author of truth. He is truth. Anything that conforms to how he thinks that's that's true.

01:07:38

If if not, then who gets to define all these things? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a really good point.

01:07:46

And again, when I'm interacting with skeptics and atheists, if they say that, well, truth is is what

01:07:55

I think or truth is how I understand reality, then I just I'll take that worldview and I'll flip it back on them and I'll say, yeah, you're right.

01:08:04

Truth is within us. And that's why I believe that the scriptures are true and all human beings are the creatures of God and we must submit to him.

01:08:13

And then they say, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not true. And I say, well, wait a second, you just said that truth is within us, that truth is how we understand reality.

01:08:21

I understand that we're the creatures of God, that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Consequently, we need to worship him.

01:08:28

So come on, let's pray right now. You know, and it's silly, but it shows the inconsistency of believing that truth is relative.

01:08:36

Right. You're using Proverbs 27, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

01:08:42

I loved how Bonson explained that because that that proverb just was really an enigma for me.

01:08:50

I didn't understand the the the significance of it until you come to the scriptures with a presuppositional approach.

01:08:58

It's like, oh, my goodness, do not answer a fool, lest you be wise in his own eyes. Answer a fool according to his folly.

01:09:04

It's just a great antithesis, you know? Yeah. Yeah, excellent. I think the last thing that I had wrote down,

01:09:13

Chris brings up the chessboard and the chess game. And you ask, are the rules of chess merely conventions made by men?

01:09:22

Right. Which I think was Bonson -esque when he asked when he asked about the laws of logic, are those merely conventions made by man?

01:09:33

Again, excellent question. I love how you were thinking on your toes. How did he flesh that out?

01:09:39

Yeah, it's very it's very Bonson. I've listened to that Gordon Stein Bonson debate probably upwards of 40 to 50 times.

01:09:48

It is a master class debate. And anyone interested in apologetics owes it to themselves to listen to that debate.

01:09:56

It is life changing. Yeah. You know what? I'm going to put it in the comments box. And have you seen the most recent one where they actually have a picture of Stein and Bonson and the words are floating out like you can read them and their mouths are moving?

01:10:09

Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll I'll put it in the comments section.

01:10:15

And when I upload the video, I'll send it to you. You can click. It's it's actually really cool to watch. It's really good because, you know, the audio when

01:10:23

I first listened to it was was, you know, it needed some help. So they they enhanced the audio and now they got little, you know, little mouths going and they had the words on the screen.

01:10:34

So it's easier to follow. So I'll send that to you. But it was excellent. Yeah, obviously, obviously.

01:10:41

So how did he how did he flesh out the merely conventions thing when he talked about the chessboard?

01:10:49

Yeah, you know, again, I think that he moved on to another example and then tried to reason with that and then moved on to another.

01:10:59

I I wish that I knew more about what he believed and how and how his epistemology because, again,

01:11:10

I use the example of are these human conventions? And he didn't he didn't give me an answer that I could interact with.

01:11:22

So and I think that that's good. I think it's a good thing that he did because it exposes the inconsistency of atheism and skepticism because he's he's trying to use chess and language and shovels to justify the laws of logic and morality.

01:11:42

And I'm telling him, you know, language is a human convention, you know, not not communication specifically, but languages,

01:11:51

English, Spanish, Japanese. Those are human conventions. Chess is a human convention.

01:11:57

When you say that morals are equivalent to the the the operations of these things, then you're saying that morals are equivalent to human conventions.

01:12:13

And and no atheist would ever say that they'd never come right out and say, well, maybe some of them would, but the ones that know better would never come right out and say morals are absolutely relative.

01:12:27

There is no right and wrong because that's that's that's the death blow of atheism.

01:12:34

They can't believe that. Yeah. You know, when when he brought up the chess illustration and started going through it,

01:12:42

I immediately thought I'm like, this is like one of the pawns on the chessboard screaming at God and saying, you don't make the rules.

01:12:50

Us pawns and us rooks and us bishops, we make the rules and we decide what our goal is and what's right or wrong.

01:12:58

It's like the very the very fact of playing chess means that there are rules imposed on these particular pieces.

01:13:06

They can only go in a certain direction. They can only go so far. There's there's rules. And it's the same thing.

01:13:13

Look, chess was invented by an image bearer of God. Right. Any image bearer of God, the virtues and the natural the natural theology is going to come through in that there are rules when you play games.

01:13:29

Why are there rules when you play games? Because life is not a game, but there are rules for life.

01:13:35

We aren't allowed to wholesale murder people. So that all that stuff comes through even when you're when you're inventing a game.

01:13:42

And then for him to bring that up and not realize like you have strict rules for these pieces and they can't change.

01:13:52

Yeah, yeah. It's it's really disappointing because he started with chess and then he went to language and then he went to a shovel.

01:14:02

He was saying he was saying, you know, ethics are like a shovel. I don't know where it came from.

01:14:08

Maybe it came from heaven. I don't know. But I can use this shovel. And if you listen to the debate, if you listen carefully,

01:14:14

Anthony, I started to ask him this question. I said, how do you know the shovel?

01:14:21

And then he cut me off and said something. And then I said, OK, that's it. We're done. We've gone an hour and 20. We're done. But I was going to ask him something that I learned from you about the butter knife.

01:14:30

I was going to ask him, how do you know that you're using the shovel correctly? Because if I take a shovel and I start using it to,

01:14:39

I don't know, put butter on my bread, someone's going to come along and say, hey, that's not how you use a shovel.

01:14:46

A shovel was created for this purpose. Amen. So for him to try to bring out a shovel and say,

01:14:52

I don't know where it came from. Well, if you don't know where it came from, then you can not say that you are using it correctly.

01:15:01

Yes. If it came from something that we don't know, then we don't know how it's supposed to be used.

01:15:09

And you're just using it in a random way that that has no meaning whatsoever.

01:15:14

And if you apply that to ethics, then we have no clue where ethics came from. Everyone can use it however they want.

01:15:21

How do we know? How do we know that that we ought not kill? What if it is actually ethical to kill?

01:15:30

You can't answer anything if you assume that ethics just came from the ether and we don't know.

01:15:37

So I wish I could have asked that question, but we've just gone too long and it just it just was time to wrap it up.

01:15:43

But I thought about you. I thought about your butter knife example and you didn't pay me to say this, but you guys need to listen to Always Ready.

01:15:54

It's listen to his class on Always Ready. It's going to change your life. It's super helpful. You guys owe it to yourself to do it.

01:16:01

I actually just recently put up a short, a three minute short of the butter knife illustration, because rather than having people watch a 45 minute video just to get to that piece,

01:16:12

I cut it out. I put it up there and I ran it past a couple of different guys because I didn't want to put it up there.

01:16:17

And people would be like, that's not such a good illustration. But most of the guys are like, yeah, that's going to help people.

01:16:23

It's super simple. It's super easy. I designed it really for my kids to explain to them that something is defined by its creator.

01:16:36

If there's no creator, then like the butter knife, it could be a screwdriver. It could be a hammer. It could be a self -defense weapon.

01:16:43

It could be anything that you decided to be. Like with Chris, the shovel could be really a tool to take down a tree or it could be a weapon to hit somebody with.

01:16:53

There's a million things it could be. So like you said, how does he know he's using it right? Without a connection to the creator, we don't know anything, how to use anything in this world that he's created.

01:17:09

You just have to live by faith. Exactly. It really comes down to that.

01:17:15

It really comes down to that, brother. Well, listen, I don't want to take too much more of your time. I really appreciate you coming on.

01:17:22

Tell us again where people can find you and what you have in the hopper, what you're looking to do.

01:17:29

Yeah, I'm pretty much just on YouTube. If you look up Brandon Germany, I'm on there.

01:17:35

There's a picture of me holding a chicken. I really love chickens. Don't ask me why. I don't know. I just really love chickens. But yeah,

01:17:42

I'm on there. I don't have anything in the works as of yet. I try to keep an eye out for debate opponents.

01:17:51

And it's kind of sad because now that I have some stuff up there, I get a lot of comments where guys are like, you're stupid.

01:17:59

You're an idiot. God is fake. You're so slur, slur, slur. Also, I'll debate you.

01:18:04

And it's like, brother, come on, it's not going to happen. So I'm always open to respectful, meaningful debates, conversations with anyone who wants to have it.

01:18:16

But yeah, I'm on YouTube. Nothing in the works right now. We'll see what God has in store. OK, you know, you might want to contact

01:18:23

Marlon from the Gospel Truth. He puts on the debates and he's not going to match somebody who's like a

01:18:31

PhD with somebody who has a high school education. He tries to get equally paired guys.

01:18:37

So I'm sure if you reach out to him, he'll start looking for an opponent. And that would be a good opportunity for you.

01:18:44

Definitely, definitely. Well, brother, thanks again. I wish you all the best. I'm praying for you and we're going to be in contact.

01:18:50

So I'm going to close the show and then we'll talk for a minute or two afterwards. OK. All right. Thank you so much for having me on.

01:18:56

I really appreciate it. My pleasure. My pleasure. So, friends, once again, my name is Anthony Uvini. I'm your Reform Grookie host.

01:19:02

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01:19:44

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