Atheism Deflated

Online Apologetics and Supporting the Channel

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and it is midnight. So yes, this is a live stream. It's midnight. I have no idea who is going to be watching. It's okay if nobody's watching for now, but hopefully folks who listen in later will enjoy the conversation that I'm gonna have with my special guest today and share the content.

I know that I've been getting a lot of positive feedback for the content. I really appreciate that. And if you could do me a solid, subscribe to the channel, subscribe to the podcast and share. If you guys really think that there's value in supporting online apologetics at not just my channel, but others, maybe folks who I've had on the show in the past, you know, support them.

I think we need a lot more of this content out there. So, well, I just would like to begin by saying thank you to Charlie Keenan. Now, no one's gonna know who that is, but Charlie Keenan is a student of mine.

He signed up for my PreSuppU online apologetics course. And he was so kind to send me this Greg Bonson coffee mug. And it is now my favorite mug to drink out of. I could even drink my coffee presuppositionally.

I don't even know what that means, but it's super awesome. And on the back here, it says the preconditions of intelligibility. So I can bring this bad boy to a coffee house and maybe some unbeliever will say, what's that mean?

And then they can be lured into my presuppositional traps. So thank you so much, Charlie Keenan. This is super cool, man. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Well, I am, and I say this at the beginning of every episode, I'm super excited about all of my guests, but I'm especially excited about my guest tonight.

He is from the YouTube channel, Deflate. If you have not heard of Deflate, you can take two seconds to open up another window. Maybe you're on your laptop or something and subscribe to Deflate, the YouTube channel, and you will find excellent content there.

My guest, he's a really down to earth guy. He's a funny guy, he's smart, his content is excellent, and he provides excellent resources in responding to atheism in general and YouTube atheism in particular.

So please go over there, support him, subscribe to his channel, and I guarantee that you will definitely find his stuff useful. So without further ado, I'd like to invite Lucas on the screen with me, and maybe he can share a little bit more about himself.

How's it going, Lucas?

I'm good. Good evening or good night, Eli. Morning, 7 a .m. over here.

That's right. So it's 7 a .m. where you are. Folks are probably wondering what the heck am I doing having a midnight live stream here on the East Coast of North Carolina. Lucas is on the other side of the world.

Where are you from, Lucas? That's right.

Well, I am from Switzerland, but I've lived in Lebanon, that is in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, for the past 10 years. So that's where we're located.

And what led you there from where you grew up in Switzerland, you said? That's right. And how did you get to Lebanon?

Well, basically my wife and I felt called to do ministry abroad. We always felt a pull towards the Middle East. And then it was, well, it was a long process of figuring out where exactly we should be going.

But we felt specifically a pull towards Beirut, not just to Lebanon actually, but to Beirut specifically. And that's because Beirut, I mean, now it's changed a bit, but Beirut has always been kind of the hub for young Middle Easterners to connect to the Western world and Western values and to just everything that's happening.

I mean, there's a thriving LGBTQ scene here. There's quite a thriving arts and music scene. And so that's where, it's the place where young Arabs can express themselves more freely than in other place in the Middle East.

And that's what pulled us to come here and do ministry among people who have a very secular mindset actually. Sure, excellent.

Wow. So your focus is evangelism, apologetics, and more specifically atheism. At least that's your YouTube channel. I'm sure you do other things and have other focuses face-to-face with people, right?

Yeah. Why don't you explain for us the differentiation between how you share your faith apart from being in front of a camera, and then we can kind of move into the content of your YouTube channel, which I think folks will be interested in hearing about.

Yeah, so actually the two connected seamlessly. I mean, we've built the community off the ground here in Beirut where like the focus is, or the focal point is a weekly Bible study that happens on Thursday night in a cafe.

We started off in Starbucks. And what we basically do is just, you know, we go chapter by chapter through books in the Bible, and then we read one chapter and it's open for discussion and conversation.

And we usually have around 15 to 20 people show up and most of them skeptics or atheists. And then also what happened is I got connected to a leader of an atheist club, and we started to bring our groups together in my living room actually for apologetic discussions or for just philosophical discussions.

You know, why is the universe here? Is morality objective and all that sort of stuff. And like this got, like this picked up really well. I mean, we would sometimes have 30 or even more people kind of cramming into our living room on Saturday night.

And so actually back in the days, people would keep telling me, hey, Lucas, why don't you start a YouTube channel where you put the arguments out that you actually make when we gather as a community? And so at some point, again, one and a half years ago, I thought, okay, let's do it.

That's how, again, it just connect offline and online ministry connected quite naturally for me.

Doing Apologetics on Social Media

So how did you set, so what's the magic behind your setup? Your videos are excellent. They're very well made. You know, a lot of, I was just, we were just talking just briefly before we went live. It takes a lot of work to do this.

What did your setup look like? You got all fancy equipment or you kind of just, okay.

Yeah, well, actually I am in a privileged position because I also work with a studio here in Beirut and we produce just, I mean, that's what I do during the day. We produce like Christian media for other ministries.

For example, we lead the first online campaign of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which is focused on Iraqi youth. We produce that for, like we produce the content from A to Z. And so, I mean, I've got a guy who films and then I have a guy who edits.

I mean, I edit myself too, but like I've got help from professionals. So that's why my stuff looks, yeah, tends to look neat, I think, yeah.

All right, okay. I thought you were just in a closet somewhere just doing it all by yourself. There's magic happening behind the screen. That's awesome. Yeah, very good. All right, well, I'm looking at your channel now.

I've watched a bunch of your videos, but I'm encouraging people that they need to go visit your YouTube channel, Deflate. And it looks here that you address things that are happening in kind of like, I wouldn't say pop culture, but just in culture, things that are on TikTok and social media.

How does someone approach responding to snapshot attacks on Christianity? So like, for example, you go on TikTok, the videos aren't very long, but there are people who attack Christianity in a couple of seconds and it goes viral.

How would you encourage Christians to engage in apologetics in such a snapshot, very quick context there? Because it seems difficult, right? If God is good, why is there evil in the world? I mean, it's so hard for a Christian to make like a 10 second video in response to such a deep question.

How do you approach that?

Yeah, that's very hard. I mean, I've been challenged to, since YouTube put out the shorts platform, I challenged myself to try how that works or if I can make videos that will be appealing. And I mean, it is very challenging to put out a message within no more than 59 seconds.

I guess Not even a minute. They don't even give you that one more second. Exactly.

So I think, but at the same time, I actually like the challenge because even during my studies, you always feel when you write the paper or when you present something or when you give a sermon or anything, you will always feel that you don't have enough time.

You will always, if you do your research well, if you dig into stuff, you will always have far more material available because you have to. If you really wanna look into something seriously, you will have to gather a lot of material.

And then when it comes to actually getting this across, you will always feel like, man, I cannot even tell 10 of what people should know about this. But this, what I love about this is it forces you to really dig deep and find the core of what the problem or the issue is all about.

And so that's, I guess that very much applies to doing this short response stuff is you have to dig deep and find, well, what is the core issue? And what is just fluff? What is the kernel of what's going on here?

And then how do I communicate that effectively? So I like the challenge. I know it's very difficult and I know sometimes it does feel like squaring a circle because again, take the problem of evil. Well, people have been writing and discussing it for thousands of years.

Like who are you to offer a solution or some sort of hypothesis within a minute? But still, it's a good challenge to take.

So it seems to me that there is some background knowledge that needs to be had, not just in the content, but just background knowledge in how to think and identify kind of the crystallization of the issue that needs to be addressed.

What is your background in terms of your own, perhaps seminary background, if you have seminary background, or maybe just your background in terms of your own study? How can people approach this issue of training their minds to identify those nuggets, that central point, especially in, as we said, that snapshot social media context?

Yeah, well, I would encourage people to whenever they face something they've never thought of, something that is new to them, an issue, be it philosophical or theological, take it as an opportunity to put down on your reading list or on your YouTube watch list or whatever, so that you can actually deal with the issue.

If you don't have time right at the moment, you're seeing it later on. I mean, there's good YouTube videos out there which recommend books that get you started into apologetics or with regards to certain issues.

There is good courses. I mean, I did a master's in Christian apologetics at Biola, but they have a good certificate program, which is like a 16 hours program that you can accomplish at your own leisure or how it, whatever fits your schedule.

Well, the online programs are excellent. I did my master's at Liberty. Now, apart from the contrary that Liberty, controversy that Liberty has been in, despite that, I got my master's before all that happened, but there are some really good online resources if people are looking for kind of like a more organized way of studying.

If anything, and I'm sure you could attest to this, that doing seminary or taking some kind of organized course teaches you discipline, which is something very important when you're doing what we do. You need to learn how to focus.

So I think that's a very helpful thing to pursue. Now, yeah, do you want to follow up on that?

Well, I mean, that's all good. I also just think one very practical advice is to limit your time on social media. There's just so much time being wasted by scrolling through feeds. And it's, I mean, it's just, you should tell yourself, well, you know how much is reasonable and then stick to that.

That's a good kind of practical. It's addicting, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. Like I feel like seeing what stupid things going on, you just scroll through, look, you know, a cat video. Like that's. All right, well, okay, so that's good. So a formal education is helpful and even just personal study.

I mean, you don't need to go to seminary to do apologetics, but you definitely need to have some kind of discipline time set aside. So that will help people identify core issues so that they could address it in a meaningful fashion.

That's good. Now, so atheism seems to be the focus of your YouTube channel. And I see a lot of videos with, I forgot this gentleman's name, you. Cosmic Skeptic. There we go, Cosmic. There's Cosmic Skeptic.

And then there's the other guy with the beard. Rationality rules. There we go, rationality. I don't know why their names escape me, okay. So you tend to kind of focus on these YouTube atheists. Atheism is really, seems to be a focus of yours.

Both of us are Christian. We both think atheism is false. Why don't you kind of lay out, and I'm sure you don't have like, you know, a transcript in front of you with, you know, outlines and stuff like that.

But why don't you lay out for us some of the best reasons you think atheism is false? And maybe we can engage in some of those. And assuming that some people, again, people who watch my channel, they know I'm a presuppositionalist.

But as a presuppositionalist, I believe everything can be used as evidence for God. So that's fair game for those who come from a more classical approach or an evidential approach. There's still important information that we as presuppositionalists can use.

And there's great value, I think, cross-pollination between the methods in ways that I think we can benefit from. So how would you, from your perspective, assuming you're not a presupposition, I mean, I don't know what your apologetic methodology is, but what are some things you can kind of provide my listeners with in terms of why atheism is false, something they can use in conversation, perhaps?

Why Atheism Fails as an Explanation of Evil, Morality, and Meaning

Yeah, well, yes, you're right.

I'm not a presuppositionalist. I mean, I appreciate like the inspiration and the kind of the, well, just the take that presuppositionalism brings to apologetics. But let me just offer one argument why I believe atheism doesn't make sense and Christianity makes more sense.

And something that may actually resonate with the presuppositionalist as opposed to if I just were to offer an evidentialist argument. When you take the problem of evil, I believe, I mean, the problem of evil is arguably the toughest objections, objection against Christianity.

And I believe what Christianity offers is so powerful and so much more powerful for the following reason. When people, I mean, the problem of evil is a philosophical issue to some extent, I mean, to a certain extent for sure, but it is also a very personal and existential issue.

I mean, people, most of the time, ask the problem of evil question or why is there evil because they themselves have gone through suffering or their loved ones have done so. Now, when it comes to the need a person has in the face of evil, it isn't actually information.

They don't actually need information why evil has befallen them. They don't need explanations of why the thing that has happened has happened. Let me give you an example. My sister lost two babies during her pregnancy.

And one of the, in one case, I mean, they have kids. But yeah, in one of the cases, her, it was such a tricky situation. This is like a special medical situation that what actually happened is that she had to give birth in the seventh month or so to the baby.

And in the process of giving birth, she knew that the baby was gonna die. But this was, it was such that this is how this had to happen for some reason. Now, this was very traumatic, it was very difficult.

Now, for my sister in this situation, it didn't really matter so much for her to know the medical ins and outs of why, what is happening biochemically or whatever with her body and the body of her baby.

What she really, even though I guess that provided some context, but what she really needed was people to sit with her and cry with her and feel with her and tell her, you know, in the best case, people who can say, well, I actually know how this feels.

This is so painful. I've gone through something very similar. I lost the baby. Or at least people who could say, well, I try to understand you. I really wanna feel with your pain. And so here comes the, here's how this relates to the problem of evil.

Christianity tells us that this is, and so this is what Hebrews 4 tells us, is this is exactly what God, the ultimate being, the creator of all things, what God does in Christ on the cross. You know, he identifies with us in our suffering.

He, in Christ, God can tell us, hey, I know how it feels to go through the pain that you're going through because I've been tempted in all things as you were. I've gone through all the same stuff and ultimately I've gone through death.

Death on the cross. And that's why I'm right there with you in your suffering. And that's why I think it is, when it comes to the problem of evil, again, people don't need good answers. They actually need someone to tell them I'm right there with you.

And that's what God does in Christ. And I think that's a beautiful way in which Christianity plugs in and relates to our suffering and to the experience of man.

There's just so much pain. Yeah, I think that's an excellent point because I think a good apologist needs to make the differentiation between giving a logical answer and not caring about the logical answer and being able to just be there for a person.

I think we tend to be very, always have that response, always be ready to give a reason. And sometimes the answers that we need to give are not answers. It's just to be with the person. So I think that's definitely something we all could learn from, especially presuppositionalism in particular.

We tend to, I mean, I'm a presuppositionalist, but we tend to always try to answer every question because Christianity can account for that. It can account for it. Sometimes someone doesn't need the accounting.

Sometimes people need a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen. So excellent, excellent. So what other reasons do you think atheism is false? So you say that Christianity provides a better explanation and accounting for why there's evil and suffering in the world.

What other sorts of things do you appeal to to perhaps try to convince someone that atheism is not an adequate outlook on the world?

Well, I guess, you know, just connecting to what I said about the problem of evil, I mean, a very convincing argument for me is the moral argument. I believe we all have, like no one can live as a moral relativist.

I mean, people profess to be moral relativist or subjectivist, but no one lives like that. It's just not possible. And in fact, I mean, Cameron Bertuzzi and I are gonna respond to Drew from Genetically Modified Skeptic where he, again, a couple of things he says about morality.

And I just feel like, come on. I mean, are you, maybe if your life has been all, you know, pink clouds and happy clappy, yeah, you could, you know, that would give you some reason to think that morality is subjective.

You know, you've never faced real problems. I come from part of the world where just, you know, people are being bombed out of their houses. You know, kids are kind of caught in crossfire and women are systematically raped.

Like, are you seriously gonna tell me that you will face these people if you had to and tell them, well, what happened to them isn't really bad? You know, that's just dumb. I mean, sorry, that's just dumb.

And if, you know, someone once said, if you don't, if you can't say that certain things like the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide, or again, this trafficking and all this stuff isn't bad, well, you don't need a philosophical argument.

You need a psychologist, you know, or a psychiatrist. Because, you know, so I think, and the interesting thing is at the same time, you know, our culture is so obsessed with social justice and with racial justice.

Well, why would you be if these things are just a matter of taste, you know? So, and again, I believe that it's gonna be really hard to make a case for these things being objective if you don't have God as part of your world you picture.

It's just, you know.

Sure, yeah, absolutely. Now, it's an interesting approach that you're taking there is you're kind of appealing to people's existential experience. Now, while that's not a, in and of itself, a logically airtight argument against atheism, it still holds very, it's a very powerful approach because it really hits people in a place where they very much resonate with those experiences.

I mean, we can use logical argumentation and it's just too abstract to make that connection, even though our logic is good and we proved the conclusion, there's a role to play for both those sorts of arguments.

But how would you speak to the more intellectually minded atheist that says, yeah, I kind of see those are emotionally difficult. Well, I mean, when you really boil down to it, emotional appeals are not going to get us to truth.

You know, I want to see the logic of theism. I want to see the logic of why you think atheism doesn't work. And of course, people might even argue with that. Atheism doesn't work. It's just a lack of belief, you know?

Atheism is not a worldview, you know, these sorts of things. How would you give a more logical, not so much appealing to the existential experience, but a more logical reason as to why you think theism's true, atheism's false?

Yeah, very good question. I think two or one thing that one key issue that connects to two arguments actually has become very important for me recently, especially just due to a bunch of discussions we've been having here on the ground.

It's, you know, someone once said, I think it might've been Thomas Nagel, the atheist philosopher from New York University. He said that the difference between, I'm not sure if it's him, but I think it's him.

He said the difference between atheism and theism is that atheism posits that matter precedes mind, whereas theism posits that mind precedes matter, okay? So God as the ultimate mind, he's the starter or the creator of all things.

Following from the mind comes matter, which the mind created, the divine mind created. Whereas on atheism, you will say, or naturalistic atheism anyway, you would say that matter, you know, somehow the universe came into being, so matter came first.

And at some point you got mind that is conscious beings like ourselves. Now, I think there are, again, this, if you take this, just this view, or if you look at the issue from this angle, you can make two arguments.

And one is that I think God is a better explanation for consciousness or for conscious, for there being conscious beings like ourselves and for the experience of subjectivity. It's if you have mind first, then a mind can give rise to other minds.

You know, it's the cause is enough to bring about a certain effect or the effect doesn't exceed what the cause entails, which, I mean, the cause of relationships, you know, a cause cannot be followed by an effect that is greater than the cause itself.

So I think that that's one thing. It's just to explain the reality of mind, you're far better off if you start your worldview picture or your worldview narrative ultimately with the mind. You know, the atheist is gonna have a problem to account for minds if matter has been there first.

That's one thing. And then following from that is, well, you know, the reason why we can do science is again, because there is divine mind that has ordered everything and which allows our minds to connect to, again, the order that is out there and discover it and describe it.

I think God is a far better explanation for why we can do science than, you know, atheism. It's a complete, if on atheism, the fact that the world is so delicately ordered and I'm not even just talking about the fine tuning argument here, but again, about the fact that you can do science, about the fact that there are laws because even Albert Einstein said, why is the world ordered?

We are a priori, one should actually expect a chaos out there. One shouldn't expect for, you know, if all there is is chance and matter in motion, one shouldn't expect that matter happens to organize itself so delicately and nicely.

That the relationship of matter between itself can be described by laws. And so I think that's why God, if there is again, if mind precedes matter, well, it makes complete sense or it is to be expected that matter is gonna behave in ways that can be described by laws and just regularities and all that stuff.

So you would argue along the lines that, for example, consciousness is best explained by theism and that the fact that science is a thing and that we could assume regularity and uniformity, that's best explained via theism as opposed to an atheistic outlook.

Yes, I believe so.

I mean, the thing is, you know, when it comes to consciousness, I mean, till today, consciousness is one of the biggest mysteries for philosophers and scientists alike to understand and to describe. It's, you know, how, again, how come, especially if you're a naturalist or an atheist, how come that matter could give rise to something that is so qualitatively different?

You know, no accumulation of matter has consciousness. I mean, just again, if you put a bunch of rocks together or I don't know, a bunch of pieces of wood or whatever, consciousness is not gonna arise.

And so how come that there are these beings who have, again, the capacity to reason, to, you know, to create art, to do language and to think back and to think into the future? It's just, you know.

The Soul, Brain, and Mind

So, okay. So that's kind of a standard answer that a lot of theists would use who use the argument for the existence of an immaterial soul. And of course they'll appellate back. Now, what would you say to someone who says something along the lines?

Well, wait a minute. When we affect the brain, you're right. You know, it messes up the way we think. So if there's this kind of this ghost in a machine, so to speak, there's this soul that's different than the brain.

Why is it the case that it seems like we can control the mind by manipulating the brain or when the brain is injured, you know, you have people forget and these sorts of, it seems like the brain is all there is.

So how would you kind of respond to someone who comes at it from that angle? Yep.

Very good question. I've done an interview with JP Moreland on this issue on my channel because he's written an excellent book, The Soul, Why It Matters and Why It Exists or something, a very, very good book.

Okay. Well, I think the first thing to be aware of is that causation and correlation are not the same thing. It is certainly true that by touching, you know, and like an electrode or whatever, with an electrode, a region in your brain, you know, you could generate a person having some sort of experience or a memory or a thought.

Sure. But that doesn't yet mean that, you know, that thought is in the brain. I mean, in the same way that if you, if I take two wires and put them against each other, or I mean, I make them touch and I have some spark coming up.

I mean, that doesn't mean that the, I mean, that doesn't mean that the spark is the wires, obviously, you know, the two things correlate. On the other hand also, I mean, if everything, if we are just our brain, if a person is their brain, well, you know, there are people who have only 50 of their, like, or who lose 50 of their brain mass.

Now is this, are you, that would mean if, again, if people are just their brains or if our personality is in our brains or whatever, that, well, if once a person loses part of their brain, well, they're just half a person, you know?

So yeah, that's how I would go about. I mean, it's a tricky one. Obviously, I'm not denying that our mental experiences are related to the physical brain, but that does not yet mean that those mental experiences are in the brain, you know?

You will never be able to find the memories that you have somewhere in your brain. It's just, you can't find it.

It's not there. Right, right. So you would say that while, so if we affect the brain, that can affect our, quote, our mental activity. So there's a relationship between them, but that doesn't mean that they're equivalent.

So for example, thinking. Thinking doesn't occur in the brain, but when thinking is occurring, there's corresponding physical activity in the brain. There's a very close relationship between the physical brain and the immaterial mind.

That's how that created us.

Exactly, and the key thing, I mean, the key thing that's going on here is something that's related to the laws of identity or Leibniz's laws of identity. I mean, if two things are the same, if A and B are simply two ways of talking about the same thing, then everything that is true of A must also be true of B.

Was Benjamin Franklin the first president of the United States? Is that right? Or no, George Washington. George Washington. George Washington, sorry. That's okay, all right. I teach US history. I would have corrected you right away.

If George Washington is the first president of the United States, then everything that is true of George Washington is also true of the first president of the United States because George Washington and the first president of the US are just two ways of talking about one and the same thing.

And so if I'm gonna say that my mind or my soul or the eye is my brain, so that these two are just two ways of talking about the same thing, then everything that is true of the brain must also be true of the mind, okay?

But that is not the case. I mean, the brain has all properties that physical objects have. You know, you can measure location, electrical charge, and spatial extension, but you can't do that with thoughts.

You can't measure the spatial extension or electrical charge of any of your memories or thoughts. Hence, it doesn't make sense. Again, coming from the law of identity, it doesn't make sense to say that the brain is the mind or the soul is just another way of talking about what's happening in the brain.

Now, and all you need is one difference between the brain and what we're calling the mind, and that demonstrates that they're not identical. Exactly. I said, what was it called? The principle of... Indiscernible.

Indiscernible, that's something, I don't know, this is a technical term. I don't know why. I don't know if you're familiar with Eric Hernandez. He's another Christianologist who's really good in this area, and he always used this terminology.

The soul is definitely not my main strong point. I'm more into transcendental arguments, but for some reason, something about the indiscernibility of identicals or something like that.

That's it, yeah, that's right.

All right, that's right. And so Moreland lays that out, and you could also, if you're interested in the soul, Eric Hernandez has some great stuff as well. So excellent, very good. So now we can talk about these technical things, like if you use the principle of the indiscernible of identicals, you're gonna make people run away from you.

So they're gonna be like, oh, this is really weird and scary. I don't wanna talk about it. What do your conversations look like when you're speaking with an unbeliever, just like face-to-face? I mean, we don't often use this sort of language like the teleological argument, the fine-tuning, the column, or for us pre-suppers, transcendental argument.

These will scare the average person away, and they're like, I don't wanna talk to you. How do you engage atheists in like a face-to-face conversation? What does that look like?

Conversing with Skeptics About Scripture and Worldview

Yeah, I think, especially when you talk to a person for the first time, you're just gonna have to weed out some of the just basic skepticism towards, I think, scripture, and how people think, well, why should I trust this book?

And then one of the things that helps for me is the, well, and here also, people have, well, I guess it's everywhere the case, people have just this general skepticism towards religion and what, you know, this religious people are weird, and they're not really intelligent, that sort of stuff.

So I actually think that, well, in a first-off conversation with a skeptic, my aim is often just to show, well, first, to really connect to the person on a personal level, to really listen, and to hopefully be able to build friendship and trust.

And my second aim is also just to show people that I, as a believer, I think through stuff. I'm not stupid. I don't just blindly believe what the book tells me. And so it's, in general, I would just ask a lot of questions.

I mean, again, if people say, well, the Bible is just too much bigotry and misogyny and whatnot. So, I mean, I would just ask, well, have you ever read it? And then people would say, well, no, actually not.

And so I, yeah, yeah. And then right away, I just use that to tell people, well, you know, we have this group, we read the Bible together, and it's actually a lot of atheists and skeptics comment that already shocks people.

Oh, wow, you know, how does that work? How could people who are like me, you know, they would say to themselves, who don't believe, well, like, why would they ever read the Bible? And so I think that already creates some sort of attraction in a sense as well, that there must be something there that they have that, you know, makes atheists believe or atheists read the Bible.

Yeah, I think, you know, to be honest, I do believe that many non-believers, and I mean, it is true here in the Middle East. Many people have had bad experiences with religious people and with religion.

And so I think my first responsibility in these conversations is really to show that, you know, I wanna be your friend, and I might, you know, I think, you know, I can be a nice person and we can have reasonable conversations.

Sure. And that's where I would go first off, yeah. Wherever a person takes it, you know, some people come at it, again, with skepticism towards the Bible. Some people take more the, you know, science versus faith kind of approach.