Debate: Christianity or Atheism? Part 2

So here we are with the second part of the debate, which makes more sense, Christianity before hate music.

Debate Format, Rebuttals, and Cross-Examination Rules

Here's the agenda for the last part. And we'll go through a period of rebuttals,.

Another period of cross-examination, and then we'll have closing statements for each team. Before we get to the rebuttal period, where each team will have eight minutes with Jeff and Bo-Kap going first, I want to talk about the cross-examination period, the second one that's coming up.

Each team are scheduled for 10 minutes. However, Omar and Sean will be given three additional minutes for a total of 13 for their cross-examination period in order to make up for some of the time lost during the last cross-examination period, where things went a little bit with Jeff, a little misunderstanding with how far the rules met.

So when the cross-examination is going on, the team that's doing the cross-examination is the moderator, and they can move it along, and that's to be respected, and responses can be done during the rebuttal time and the closing statements.

And Jeff, I think you were gonna.

Yeah, I guess I was working on a different protocol there of the debate point, so yeah. Maybe you can watch her in there, correct? Yes, okay. Yep, all right. Apology accepted. Oh yeah, so I apologize deeply, very, very sorry.

Sorry. Completely wrong, and it's all yours.

All right, now we'll move forward, and we'll learn. We're in the remote, you have to wash his car, Tim. Oh yeah, we're not washing the feet, Omar. Rebuttal period, moving forward, eight minutes each. Jeff, vocab, you have the mic.

As soon as you begin speaking, your eight minutes will begin ahead of time. How you guys doing tonight, good? Enjoying yourselves?

Awesome, well thank you guys for being here. Okay, ready? Okay, I want you to consider the irreconcilable conflict going on in our opponent's reasoning this evening. Atheists will cry foul, and they just did.

And they'll cry foul when God executes justice upon people who rebel against him, as any righteous judge would, and become morally indignant when they see Christians falling short of some standard. They will decry the situation in children's cancer wards and condemn people like Jeffrey Dahmer.

And yet, our opponents are claiming to be standing on an atheistic view of man. In their view, man is nothing more than cosmic broccoli. He is a highly evolved complex of fleshy chemicals that is ultimately no different than any other product of evolution.

Ladies and gentlemen, if we could get them to stop borrowing from our worldview and be consistent within their own worldview, they would see that what happens to protoplasm just happens. In their proposed godless universe, they have lost all moral complaint when protoplasm bumps into protoplasm.

So what if purposeless complexes of atoms called children die of cancer in cancer wards? So what if a man slaughters millions of bags of biological stuff called Jews? So what if someone tortures and rapes a child?

Atheists will say, we've evolved to avoid pain. Morality is wrapped up in the avoidance of unnecessary harm. Well, what if this cosmic broccoli doesn't want to live for the avoidance of pain? What if I choose to live to take pleasure in the torture of children or other products of evolution?

The atheists will claim, as a society, we've determined what morality is and we can enforce it. If morality can just be stipulated, then it is totally arbitrary, and Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and any other person can create a larger society that overwhelms yours, and they can just determine that torturing people is a good, moral, happy thing to do, and you lose the right to complain about it.

Basically, might makes right in the atheistic worldview. Atheists are acting as though man were created in the image of God. They act as though humans should love one another. They act as though there is meaning and purpose in life.

They act as though death were an enemy. Ladies and gentlemen, we're glad they do, and God has told us why they do. It is because in the deepest part of their being, they know Him. They cannot help being what God made them.

God made them to be in relationship with Him, to love Him, glorify Him, and to enjoy Him forever. Their problem this evening is not intellectual. Their problem is the same problem that vocab and I have before Christ.

It's a suppression of truth. It's intellectual. It's not, sorry, it's not an intellectual problem. It's a spiritual problem. Next, I wanted to just address a few issues that Omar had brought up in his speech.

The issue of voluntarism, that God just sort of arbitrarily decrees like what is evil and what's not, sort of like God decides that today murder is wrong, but tomorrow we can determine that murder is not wrong.

What's he attacking there is ultimately a straw man. Christians don't believe that God arbitrarily decrees what is good and what is evil. You see, what God decrees to be good flows from His own holy, perfect, and pure character.

And so when God tells me, Jeff, don't lie, it's not as though God can tomorrow say, Jeff, now you can lie. Now please lie lots of times. You see, God is holy, and God cannot lie. And when He makes me, He makes me in His image as His reflection, and He makes me to be like Him.

And so I am to be like God, and so I don't lie. That's the key thing, that God doesn't just arbitrarily decide what is evil or what isn't evil. Evil is contrary to His own good and moral character. Notice the abundance of times that's in Omar's speech, and even in Sean's too, we heard words like dilemmas.

We heard things about cause and effect. We heard things about logically self-contradicting, and you can't do that. That's logically impossible. Now I want to suggest to you guys today that if there is no God, and we are all just protoplasm moving throughout space, and all we are is just atoms banging around, then there's no reason to be logical.

There's no moral requirement to be logical. Hey, why can't I come up here tonight and lie to you to make my case? I mean, is there some moral obligation not to lie to you to make a case? And of course, we believe that, but you see, if the laws of logic are just matter, as Sean understands, then they're not universal, and they're not necessary.

If laws of logic only exist in our minds, they're not universal, they're not necessary, they're not invariant, and we can just create our own laws of logic, and then in that case, it wouldn't be a problem for me to completely contradict myself, given their worldview.

Thank you.

The time to stop is less than four minutes, so we'll begin when Bo Peck speaks.

I mentioned a number of opening things in my opening statement in regards to the historical Jesus, and I didn't hear much interaction with him. We got a little bit in the cross-examination, but I'll remind you, I still, I brought up six or seven things, and that could be too many, but maybe just one we would like to see some interaction with.

For example, Sean brought up a number of things, and it'd be difficult for us to try to deal with every one, but you can. So for example, in Judges 119, he mentioned, I looked it up in the New American Standard, and it translates it this way.

Now, the Lord was with Judah, and then it says, they took possession of the hill country, and it says, but they could not drive out the inhabitants. So it seems clear, if it's they in the New American Standard, and you have it, it's saying Judah could not drive them out.

It's not saying God could not defeat the iron chariots, and just think about it. Did the author of Judges know about the exodus, and God brought down a whole sea upon a bunch of Egyptians and chariots?

I think he knew that, and probably would have put, God couldn't get the tanks of the day out. Not a problem. We can't deal with everyone, but if they just tackle one or two. Now, going on to the authorship of the Gospels, all of our earliest evidence is absolutely unanimous about who wrote these.

For example, you'll often hear people like Bart Ehrman and Ford say, well, they're anonymous, but we don't have any copies of these Gospels without the inscriptions. If we have Matthew 1, we have where it says, the Gospel according to Matthew.

It's either not there, ripped off, in other cases with papyrus fragments, or it always says Matthew. It never says any other names. For example, these are our earliest ones, with Luke, papyrus four, circa 200 AD.

It specifically says Gospel according to Luke. Look these up. Matthew, P66, papyrus 66, circle 150, 200, it says Gospel according to Luke. P75, circle 175 AD, includes John, and before John one, it says Gospel according to John.

And there's possibly one more with one called papyrus, Oxyrhynchus two, but we're not as sure about that one. Even in the Gospels themselves though, we can see little hints about this. For example, if you look at Mark, he does what a lot of ancient authors did.

He has something called an inclusio, sometimes called an envelope. In the very beginning, Mark 1, 16, he mentions Peter right away. At the very end, Mark 16, 7, he mentions Peter again, which is a common way ancient authors would signify to the audience, this is my source for this document.

And interestingly enough, our earliest sources in regards to the Gospel of Mark all say, yes indeed, Peter. For example, papyrus writing around 130 says this, quote, the elder used to say this also, Mark became the interpreter of Peter and he wrote down accurately, but not in order as much as he remembered of the sayings and doings of Christ.

In Luke, he doesn't claim to be an eyewitness, but he says specifically in the introduction, which by the way is in the line of ancient historical documents, the way Luke wrote Luke 1, if you look at the introduction to it, he says, I interviewed the eyewitnesses.

He doesn't even claim to be an eyewitness. We don't make stuff up, but he got eyewitness testimony. We could go on and talk about John, how at the end he says, this is the disciple telling you these things, and who was he talking about right before that?

He was talking about John. Look at the end of John, you'll see. He's clearly saying, I John. He doesn't say I John, but he says he is an eyewitness to these things. Thank you. Now we'll move on to the next rebuttal period.

Eyewitness Testimony and the Authorship of the Gospels

Omar and Sean now have eight minutes to give response and rebuttal, and their time begins as soon as the first one of them speaks.

First I want to talk about the iron chariots thing. I understand that it was probably referring to Judah who couldn't defeat the people of the valley, and not that God couldn't do it, but if God was with Judah, and he helped them beat the people of the mountains, then I think that most likely he would have also helped them defeat the people of the valleys, but anyway, that isn't a terribly important thing.

More important is things like eyewitnesses to Jesus. The Bible says that over 500 people saw him resurrected. The problem with this claim is that we don't actually see any of these eyewitnesses writing about this.

We don't see even one person who, from that time, says, I saw Jesus resurrected. There was supposed to have been over 500 of them, and not one wrote it down. There were also, when Jesus was resurrected, it says that other people were resurrected with him and went back into Jerusalem, and not one of those people wrote it down.

If I was resurrected, I would definitely write it down, or have someone write it down for me if I didn't know how to do it myself. I think that these are fairly large omissions. The accounts that he's talking about, the Gospels, are all from decades after the time when Jesus is said to have lived.

Even if we believe the chronology, it still would not have likely been the people who were with him writing these things down. It would have been someone telling second-hand information later, for the most part.

Did some of them claim to have been, to have spoken to eyewitnesses? But people also made false claims, and we can see this, and I'm sure they would agree that you can see this in other books which are not in the Bible.

They claim to have done things and seen things that didn't actually happen, and in fact, some of them are born against listening to forgers and people who are making up false stories when that is exactly what they themselves are doing.

So we can't just automatically trust these things. Okay, we'll stop the clock.

You've got about five minutes and 10 seconds.

Okay, so once again, I have heard the atheistic worldview is built up as a straw man. We're having words put in our mouth. You're saying that we're bags of protoplasm, and atoms are banging around. I don't think I ever referred to any protoplasm or atoms.

I never claim that that's all that I am, or that's all that anyone else is. But this is a common tactic to try to build a very weak type of an argument to attack. That's what a straw man argument is. I want to talk about the argument from morality.

A common argument for Christianity is the argument from morality. Many atheists do not see any reason to oppose the idea of objective moral values. I think we can agree that certain types of actions are objectively morally wrong.

We might have some disagreement about what those specific actions might be, but by and large, we will agree there are objective moral values. This has nothing to do with God, unless objective moral values depend on God.

But why should we believe that they do? Because Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, and Michael Ruse say so. Their claims are denied by many philosophers, atheists, as well as theists. Even Russell and Ruse themselves denied these claims at other times in their careers.

What makes certain acts immoral is that they harm people in ways that are not justified by benefits to anyone. A Christian might ask, what's immoral about causing serious harms to other people without justification?

It seems natural to answer, it simply is, objectively. Don't you agree? It's true that some philosophers might long for a deeper explanation of why it is immoral for humans, moral agents, to cause unjustified harm.

Even if atheists were stuck with saying, it just is immoral, that would be a problem for atheism only if theists could give a better answer, but they can't. If you claim that what makes rig immoral is that God commands us not to rig, this view faces a difficult question.

Why should we obey God's commands? The answer cannot be because God will punish us if we disobey. If the answer is that it is simply immoral to disobey God, this is no more enlightening than our answer that it is simply immoral to cause unjustified harm.

A better answer is that God has a good reason for commanding us not to rig. It harms the victim, but then the harm is objectively morally wrong, regardless of what God says. No one actually gets the morality from God's commands.

They get God's commands from their morality. To claim that what God commands is what makes things wrong makes no sense. We do have objective moral values without God. To say that God is interested in humans means that the life of every single human is of the utmost importance to him.

He cares absolutely whether individual human beings believe in his existence and whether they demonstrate an appropriately awestruck attitude toward him. This is puzzling because he knows precisely and specifically what it would take for each individual human to come to believe in him, and yet he takes no effort to provide what might be needed, even though to do so would not actually require any more effort on his part than doing nothing, and yet he punishes individual humans for failing to possess what he could so easily impart.

This doesn't make a lot of sense. If God made the universe, there is nothing that exists that he did not make, but if there is more than one universe, he made the other universes too and made all of them from nothing, but there is nothing logically impossible about something being generated from nothing.

It doesn't make sense that a theist would insist the origin of the universe requires the existence of a deity. Think about how much effort it would take an omnipotent God to create the universe, none.

He could do it in an instant with his eyes closed. He could commission you or a chimpanzee with the ability to do it for him. He could create a nanoscopic robot to create the entire universe all by itself, or consider that he could create an automatic universe self-generating process that doesn't require him to participate in any meaningful way at all.

None of these scenarios would be any more difficult for him than any other, and none of them is less likely or more impossible than the traditional narrative, except that in the traditional narrative, he was so tired by the end that he needed to rest.

Does this make sense? God is never set to change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. This is taken to mean that he is everlasting and or could mean that he exists outside of time. This second idea has posed a problem for Christian theologians and philosophers that have come to recognize that it doesn't make sense for a being outside of time to ever act in time.

For this reason, the idea that God is outside of time has lost support over the last 100 years. It is incoherent that a being outside of time would answer your prayer at 3 .52 p .m. Eastern Standard Time last Tuesday, and yet the God of the Bible is a being that changes and does things in time.

He changes his mind, he changes his mood, he changes his commandments. He even makes mistakes sometimes and regrets them if we are to believe the Bible. At one point, he instructs his followers that the right thing to do is to stone a Sabbath-breaker, but today, this is surely not the case.

If this is an arbitrary morality for a changeless being, nothing is. Thank you.

Yes, 20 seconds.

Basically, I just wanted to point out that God doesn't actually say in the Bible that rape is wrong. It's not treated as a crime against a woman. It is treated as a property crime against the father or husband of the woman, and if an unwed girl is raped, then the man is supposed to pay her father a time, and then he has to marry her, and I think that's a pretty messed up kind of...

The Moral Argument from Atheism and the Problem of Divine Commands

We'll move on to cross-examinations. Jeff and Bo-Kab will have 10 minutes to do this round of cross-examination. Omar and Sean will be doing 13, as mentioned before. A reminder with the cross-examinations, it's the opportunity to ask questions, and you're always asking questions.

You're the moderator, and you can move it along. Answer questions, not statements. You can respond to statements, and you're focused later on. So, with that, we'll begin your 10-minute cross-examination of these guys when we start.

Have you ever heard of Judas bin Hezekiah, Simon the Just, and Throngus the Shepherd, circa 4 B .C.? Have you heard of Judas the Galilean, circa 6 A .D.?

I don't think so. I think I might have heard at least one of the first set of names, but...

Have you heard of Thotis, circa A .D. 45, T-H-E-U-D-S? I don't think so. I'm sure you're saying that wrong. I'm probably doing my bad pronunciation. Have you heard of Simon Bar-Gaura, circa 50 A .D.?

I'm not sure I... That's a solid A .D. Have you heard of Jonathan the Weaver, circa 73 A .D.? I don't think so. Have you heard of Andreas Lucuus, circa 115 A .D.? Have you heard of Jesus of Nazareth, circa 30 A .D.?

The 12 men I just asked you guys about, well, I didn't do all 12, I did more like nine, were all Jewish candidates for the Messiah, roughly contemporaneous with Jesus. Why do you think you're familiar with that one particular Messianic candidate, but not the others?

Because he's the one who got a following and who became very popular. There have actually been other Jewish Messiah candidates. Oh, lots, I just named them. Well, no, there have been some that got, you know, many followers also.

What happened when they died, Sean? When the Messianic candidate died, what happened to the movement?

Generally, it fell apart. The one that I was thinking of actually fell apart before he died because he converted to Islam. That was in the Middle Ages.

I'm sorry about that, that was in the Middle Ages. I'm asking about guys contemporaneous with Jesus. You are correct. Do you think Jesus died, Omar? Did Jesus die? Yeah. I can't see any reason to think he died.

Are there still a band of Christians that follows him to this day? Are there bands of Christians? I can't see his words. Are there? Certainly. Why? Why do people follow Jesus? Yeah, why not these other guys?

Why is there not these movements around these Messiahs? They just weren't as popular. Why weren't they as popular? Because they died, probably. So what I'm asking you is, what is different about this Jesus character?

People also follow Muhammad, and, you know, I don't think you would claim that he was anything special. He happened to have gotten a lot of followers who kept it going.

Yeah, Muhammad was not raised with Jesus. I'm sticking to a certain historical context. Muhammad didn't claim to be the Jewish Messiah, and Muhammad didn't say, Sean, don't fool with Jeff. And also, Muhammad never claimed that when I die, I will rise again.

No one ever went around saying Muhammad rose again. They said he gave us the Quran, whoop-de-doo. So it's a different set of circumstances. What I'm trying to get at is, it seems something different happened around this messianic movement.

I would postulate Jesus rose from the dead. I haven't heard any better reasons from you. Now, I'd be curious to see your background on this, and so if you could tell maybe us, maybe one or two of your favorite historical Jesus scholars with their names.

Either one of us? Yeah. That's Metzger here. Metzger is a textual critic. He is dead, he is good, but he's not a historical Jesus scholar. Those are pretty good choices. Sean, do you have any you'd like to share?

Not anyone else, really. Have you guys ever read or heard of any of these guys? Ben Withering III, Craig Evans, N .T. Wright, Craig Blomberg, Daryl Bach, I .R. Marshall, the late Martin Hingle, any of those?

Rainbow? I've heard of some of those names. Those are all folks that are scholars, most of them still living, doing grade-A work. They're their best sellers. Well, the world likes lies, and they like heretics even better, but they like apostates the best, and so someone that says, I was a fundamentalist, and now I'm a happy agnostic, that does well.

Someone who says, I believe Jesus rose from the dead, and that has moral implications for your life, not so much, but I don't think bestsellers, Da Vinci Code, was really a way to judge historical acumen, did you?

No, I wasn't suggesting that. The reason why I named those folks I would just say those are the books that I read. I was worried about doing this, because I didn't want to make a list of names to name drop to say, oh, you don't know these.

My point is, it seems there's a lack of actual knowledge about historical Jesus studies, and really, what happened in the first century, and see, that's what Christianity hangs on, so I want you guys to know about it, and that's why I'm asking these questions.

I would say the Jesus movement continued because the Messiah didn't stay dead, and he's coming back, praise God.

Go ahead, Jeff. All right, Sean, you had mentioned in your opening speech that there were no eyewitnesses to the resurrection that wrote about it. You didn't make that statement? Something along those lines.

Okay, I'd like to read you from 1 Corinthians 15, written by the Apostle Paul. He says, for I delivered to you as our first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

After that, he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, because they might fall asleep. Then he has appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me.

Less than five minutes.

Comment. That's essentially what I was talking about, that if all of those people had seen him.

You said that there were no eyewitnesses to Jesus' resurrection that wrote about it. I think what he said was that there were none of the people who were resurrected who wrote about the resurrection. You're referring to the 500 eyewitnesses,.

And you said that they didn't write about it. I was talking about the other people who, it's saying, you know, over 500 other people.

At the beginning of what I asked you here, I asked you, did I quote you correctly, and you said, yes. And now you're changing it. Let me read you again, Peter, in second letter of Peter, he says, for we did not follow prolifically devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses to his majesty.

Comment. Comment.

I think that these are, you know, quotes that are intended to be supportive of this religion.

On what basis do you reject this testimony from the first century, on what basis?

On the basis that we don't see anything supernatural.

So you're using your naturalistic worldview to reject outright any testimony coming about the resurrection of Jesus, is that what you're saying?

I would reject any witness, whether it was from the first century or whether it was from yesterday, about anyone that said they saw someone come back to life. Now that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.

People claim that they see their parents. Okay, let me give you another one, Lamar. What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, that's Jesus, and the life was manifested and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was also the word of the Father and was manifested to us.

What we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. That was by John, first century, right?

So you're saying we should take it on his word that he said he saw.

No, I'm actually rebutting what Sean said and that's that no eyewitnesses to the resurrection wrote about it.

I just quoted you three. Basically what I was talking about was the other people outside of the Bible. I mean, not all of those 500 people were supposed to have been people who were part of the Christian, you know.

Well, I'm curious as to why the standard needs to be outside of the Bible. Do you think the Bible, specifically the New Testament, was always one just book? The Christians carried it around? Don't find it trustworthy, though.

Okay, because you're saying the Bible, but understand the Bible has numerous different sources in it so when we talk about the 27 New Testament documents, we're talking about different authors. We're talking about documents written by different eyewitnesses.

Remember, the people that weren't eyewitnesses don't claim to be eyewitnesses. Luke doesn't need a lie. He doesn't say he's an eyewitness. He says, I interviewed eyewitnesses. So we're not scared of people who weren't eyewitnesses as long as they get the facts straight.

But the thing is, you're dealing with New Testament documents from the first century. They weren't always called New Testament documents. Why reject it just because it has the resurrection in it, especially when it's so early?

Another reason to reject it is that the accounts of whom Jesus appeared to after his resurrection vary. Now, it does say that he appeared to certain different groups of people. In one case, he appeared to one woman.

In another case, he appeared to a group of people. It's highly suspicious that something so incredible and extraordinary happened, yet the accounts of them are not identical. Omar, if you have five people, do you have one person?

Yes. Right, it doesn't say only one person. So it just mentions one, but you still have So on a technicality, you can make it true. No, no, we don't need One minute. The atheist likes to force contradictions where there be none.

Okay, considering your assumption that no God exists, so no God exists, and you know when we say no God exists, we're just broccoli, matter in motion. I'm just saying that if I have an atheist I'm not broccoli.

Okay, I was quoting Dan Barker, an atheist, that says that we are no more than the cause of broccoli, essentially. I don't have to agree with that just because No, I understand that, I understand that, but I'm making that assumption on atheism, okay?

Well, not all atheists have the same problem. Let me ask the question here, okay? So would it be appropriate for me, considering your denial of God's existence, there's no justice, no purpose, and no ultimate purpose

I don't agree with that.

I don't agree with that. Okay, then where does the ultimate purpose and meaning come from in a world.

Where it doesn't have a God? I can't speak for all atheists. I can speak for myself, but So it's arbitrary, it's subjective. No. So is there a moral requirement? Well, let me put it this way. Would it be appropriate for vocab and I to win the debate tonight to choke you?

That seems unfair. Why would we do that? There's no God.

There's no God, Tommy. I can't see how Why will you admit it? I'm reminding you of what you believe. I can't see how it has anything to do with the rules of our debate.

Well, now the next session we have in the cross-examination where we're switching the tables. And now Omar and Sean, essentially, have moderated the capability to hear, and some additional time. I'll have 13 minutes.

The last questions, respond to the questions, not the statements. Respond to the statements, and we have your closing time. With that, when you're ready, the clock will begin.

The important thing that I think we should know is how can we tell if some books were divinely inspired? How do we know which ones were divinely inspired? And whether or not the canon that you were inspired by is the canon that you believe in or a different Christian canon, since there are still in existence multiple canons, and there have been many more in the past, how do we know which one contains all of the divinely inspired books and nothing else?

I would quote a local guy here that says, they're merely artifacts of inspiration. And what that answer means is God knows.

He knows what he inspired and what he didn't. But how do you know which to follow?

Well, fortunately, there's some good tests for us. So we talk about the New Testament with apostolic closeness, proximity to the apostles. That's one way. Do you want to name a couple others? I'd like to hear a couple.

Another way is sort of a practical approach, which is it widely agreed upon in ecclesiastical settings? That's one way the churches, so there became an organic universality. And when churches run into other churches from other places, they would see, oh, you use that book too?

Oh, you use that book? Oh, you have that book? Well, why is that book legitimate? So it's your belief based on these evidence that you talk about, or who? Ultimately, a person who doesn't know how to read, who doesn't know that information, because they're a creature, if they hear the words of their creator, that will be enough, because there's a self-attestation to God's word.

And so those are good evidence and facts, but ultimately, we know God is speaking as creatures. So the way you know is that God tells you? No, I didn't say that. Oh, explain. I didn't say God tells me, but we know when we hear our maker speaking.

And so since we have general revelation, I can look out at the stars, but stars don't tell me God is triune. He gives us special revelation. Ultimately, Christianity is a revealed religion, meaning we are saying God's spoken in sign.

Right, but there's nothing you could look at that in the universe, stars, grass, trees, that would tell you that Jesus is the Son of God. This is something someone would have to teach you, and you would have to learn it.

Can I answer that? Please. Okay, thank you.

Ultimately, if I can answer quickly, the response would be that if you reject this revelation, that your worldview is reduced to absurdity. There would be the ultimate test, and if you reject this revelation, then your worldview is reduced to complete absurdity.

Is that a choice, that someone chooses absurdity over Christianity, is that what you're saying?

Well, I think atheists do that. Atheists choose absurdity? Well, I think that their worldview results in absurdity, because they can't make sense out of science, they can't make sense out of logic, they can't make sense out of human value and dignity.

I would completely disagree with that. I think that you can make sense of logic and dignity, regardless of whether God exists, otherwise we would have our prisons and our insane asylums filled with atheists, but that's my own seat.

But the question I have now is whether a person is going to choose to believe in Christ, or does this faith come from someone, does it come from God, or do we select?

Great question, and that's a glorious question. Yes, faith comes from God. So we cannot choose. We make choices every day, but they're only consistent with our nature as fallen human beings.

So we don't actually choose to have faith.

No, we do choose to believe in Christ, but that's because God, by his grace, has caused us to repent and believe. It takes a dead sinner, and he raises him to spirit life. But he doesn't have a choice, he caused it.

Yes. So that means you didn't have a choice. No, no, no, once again, I do believe, but I only believe because of what Jesus, on this point, Jesus says, no man can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up.

Why doesn't he draw everyone? Well, your assumption there is that grace can be demanded.

I'm just wondering. Well, let me answer, you're asking for an answer. The answer is God is sovereign. That is the answer. That doesn't really explain, that doesn't seem to make sense. God can do what he wants.