Review of Portions of the Ten Bruggencate/Dillahunty Debate, Response to Max Andrews

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00:35

And welcome to the Dividing Line on a - what day of the week is this?

00:40

Tuesday. What's that? How come? Now, they see what's going on now?

00:50

Yeah, what? The light's gone. Oh, well, you can lower it, but it needs to be closer to you so that - yeah, there you go.

01:00

Just put it right over the top of the thing so it kind of makes it - Yeah. But whatever was going on with it earlier today has not gone away, and so I've had to -

01:09

Really? I can't hear it. I've had to make some adjustments to your envelope. Well, that's a bummer.

01:15

Your gain. I'm going to have to move this then so I can actually see the video. You had to lower your gain. Well, anyway, welcome, folks.

01:22

We've got a lot to get to today and only a certain amount of time to get to it. Today, of course, a new

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Southern Baptist president elected. I don't know enough about that situation to get into it other than I am concerned about confetti cannons, but what can

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I say? Obviously, something's going on there that I don't know much about, but what I do know about -

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Last night, Wade Burleson posted what is found in the published materials that Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary distributed to the folks gathering at the

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Southern Baptist Convention. And I - I'll just read it to you.

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I posted this on Facebook and Twitter last night. Southern Baptists have a seminary in Fort Worth, Texas that is determined to recover the

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Anabaptist and New Testament vision while appreciating the compromised theology of the

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Reformers. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary refuses to truncate the everlasting gospel.

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Confident with the Anabaptist that we can say to every man, God loves you individually and died for your sins, Southwestern presses on the intensity of a campaign to get the good news of salvation in Christ to all seven billion on this globe.

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While allowing no discrimination against our Reformed cousins who come to us, I have no idea why that's coming up on the screen right now, we continue to sound the trumpet of leading people to Christ, baptizing them by immersion in the name of the

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and gathering them into free churches with congregational government.

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So, here's the description of Southwestern.

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And, um, it's - it's a little bit of every little part of the

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Paige Patterson, uh, campaign. It's anti -Calvinist.

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Um, it - I - I feel sorry for anybody at Southwestern who really knows history.

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They've got some folks there teaching history that just have a really, really weird view of things, really imbalanced, can never really defend itself outside the, uh, the walls of Southwestern.

03:42

Um, but the Anabaptist, um, which ones? I mean, the

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Anabaptist movement was so wildly diverse.

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And especially in the early generations, most Anabaptists didn't live long enough to really establish much of a meaningful systematic theology.

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So which ones? Michael Sattler, maybe? Uh, you really - you really want to agree with everything Michael Sattler had to say?

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Down there in Texas? I sort of doubt it. Um, but determined to recover the Anabaptist and New Testament vision.

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Then you have this - this arrogant, condescending, while appreciating the compromised theology of the

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Reformers. Don't tell me you appreciate the compromised theology of the Reformers. You don't appreciate it.

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You're on a - you're on a - a - an institutional -wide jihad against it.

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Don't - don't - don't talk about appreciating it. You don't appreciate it. Um, especially when you accuse it of truncating the everlasting gospel.

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And then later on, uh, uh, talking about our

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Reformed cousins. Not our brothers, our Reformed cousins. Um, and then, you know, taking shots at the perfection of atonement.

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Uh, God loves you individually and died for your sins. I mean, this is becoming hyper -Arminianism.

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I mean, just radical stuff. You know, changing history. Just really off into the - into the ozone layer.

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And then of course, uh, into free churches with congregational governments. You know what that is?

05:29

That's just a shot at the biblical, clearly biblical, concept of a plurality of elders.

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Which, I don't even know how you can argue that. Personally. It's just so obvious, so clear.

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Uh, but, there's the description of the school. And, um, that's not balanced, folks.

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It's not even close to being balanced. This is the same school that's now enrolling Mormons and Muslims.

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Okay, well, anyway. That was, uh, that was pretty wild. At least, uh, two things, uh, today, uh, at the

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Southern Baptist Convention. The, um, resolution about, uh, lawsuits did not go to the floor.

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Evidently because of, um, lawsuits, uh, actually pending against Southern Baptist Convention, I guess.

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Uh, at least that's the rumor I heard in the chat channel. And, um, thankfully,

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Timothy Rogers was replaced and not put forward as a trustee, uh, for the

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IMB. And, uh, that, at least, was a small, uh, good thing.

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A small good thing that took place there. But I think the wildest thing so far is this Southwestern stuff.

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Uh, Southwestern's really getting a little, a little strange. Uh, I feel for anybody there that still has a, a sound theology of soteriology, a sound soteriology, and knows something about church history.

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Uh, because some really weird views have taken over, uh, down there. It's, uh, it's strange stuff. I said to you last time that I wanted to get to this article, and I will try to as briefly as I can.

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I want to address this. Then we're going to look at a few clips, uh, from mainly audience questions, uh, from the

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Syten, Bruggenkate, uh, Matt Dillahunty, uh, debate. And then if we've got time, we're going to be going jumbo.

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We're going to go an hour and a half. Uh, I wanted to, uh, look at some materials from a new book on Molinism as well.

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We'll see how fast we can get through these, uh, these clips. So lots to, lots to cover here.

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Um, last time I mentioned to you, oh, oh, oh, wait, wait. Neat, neat, neat, neat, neat, neat, neat. Uh, where did

07:45

I, uh, put this? I do need to at least mention this because this is, we keep telling you, we, we, we tell people in the society, this is what is a part of the gay agenda.

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And we get mocked and we get laughed at and no, no, no, that's not what's happening. Uh, you people are crazy.

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And then a few years later it happens. And then the people who said we were crazy saying, well, that's a good thing. Anyways, homosexual couples in Denmark have won the right to get married in any church they choose.

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Even though nearly one third of the country's priests have said they refuse to carry out the ceremonies. Country's parliament voted through the new law on same sex marriage by a large majority, making it mandatory for all churches to conduct gay marriage.

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Now, of course, how can this happen? Uh, well, you've got state churches. And once you've got state churches, then the government's in control.

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So it's understandable why that's going to happen there first. But do not be deceived.

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It's coming our direction. It's going to be used as a mechanism to punish

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Christians. This is, it's, it's heading our way. If you can't see it, if you think this is the,

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Oh no, no, no, no. Then you're nuts. You're naive or foolish. And one of the, or maybe a combination of all three.

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If you can't see, this is exactly what they want. This is exactly where they're going. They cannot and will not simply accept tolerance.

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They will demand celebration. And only Christians can explain why.

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Romans one explains why this is. And we've, we've, we've talked about over and over again.

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Suppressing the knowledge of God. If you do not celebrate them by your very non celebration, you're pulling those fingers up.

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You're pulling those fingers up. And so they, there's a wonderful picture here.

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People throwing flowers at a gay non -marriage. And that's exactly what they want.

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Because deep down inside, they know that it's wrong. And so the only way to keep that voice quiet is to get everybody else to say,

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Oh, you're good. You're good. This is good. Got to celebrate. Got to celebrate it. So they, you know, they started in 89.

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You know, we looked over at Denmark and said, Those people are weird. Yeah. We may be behind the curve, but that curve is coming our direction.

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So keep it in mind. When it happens, you can't look at me. Why didn't you warn us?

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Well, we did. We did. Okay. An article appeared on June 4th on the

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Muslim debate initiative blog. It's simply by MDI. So I guess it's just sort of a staff article.

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Why verses in the Quran can't get lost or go missing. Some critics of Islam allege the Quran has not been perfectly preserved.

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There are verses missing from the Quran, verses that have supposedly been lost. Well, we allege that because there's evidence within the

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Islamic sources of that. But one of the great things about the Quran and its reliability is in the way it was preserved by the

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Muslims. Unlike most books, the Quran doesn't rely on textual transmission. In other words, even if every copy of the

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Quran was lost tomorrow, the Quran would still exist. Well, maybe.

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The reason for this is because the Muslims have always memorized the Quran. And this started with the prophet Muhammad and the early

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Muslims. And this continues all the way to the present day. In fact, it's very well known for Muslims to make

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Quranic memorization competitions. And you will find children who have memorized the entire Quran. This is not only limited to children.

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You will find that even blind people can read the entire Quran because they don't need a text on paper to read it from.

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In essence, the oral transmission of the Quran is its greatest asset and greatest protection. Because let's say something does get lost in the text, the oral transmission will ensure the verse does not actually get lost and remains preserved.

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So in that way, it's virtually impossible for any verse in the Quran to simply go missing or to get lost because the Muslims who have memorized the entire

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Quran would have realized this and they would always be reciting the Quran. Hence, nothing can ever get lost. The Quran has been memorized by millions of Muslims, so it is impossible for a verse to go missing because everybody will notice it.

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Now, I just stopped for a moment. There weren't millions of Muslims in those first days.

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Maybe tens of thousands at most, but there weren't millions. So this is only relevant today. I'm not sure why the screen, there's chat boxes on my face and other weird stuff going on.

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So I just thought you'd want to know that. Similarly, in the early days of Islam, thousands of Muslims memorized the

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Quran. So let's say someone had some ulterior motives and they wanted to tamper with the Quran. The rest of the community would actually recognize this because they have all memorized the

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Quran. So how does the Quran remain preserved and protected? Through oral memorization. The oral memorization also protects the

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Quran from anyone who has bad intentions to change the Quran to suit their own purposes or agenda. Now, years and years ago, when

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I debated Zulfiqar Ali Shah at Duke University, this was one of his primary arguments.

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30 ,000 people have memorized the Quran and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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There are many, many problems with this. First of all, even in the days of Umar, the third caliph, according to Sahih al -Bukhari, when many of the

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Qura, who had memorized the Quran, died in the Battle of Yamama, this resulted in a great concern that if any more of them died, that this would result in a loss of a major portion of the

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Quran. Now, that shouldn't have been an issue. The answer should have been, actually this is the first time

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Abu Bakr, the response should have been, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if all the

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Qura died, at least according to the MDI. Even if all the Qura died, everybody has memorized the

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Quran. No, there were specific people, and even they didn't have all of it, or there wouldn't be, in the

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Islamic sources, this concern. Would there? No, there wouldn't be. Further, right at the beginning,

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Therefore I suggest to you Abu Bakr, or the Quran be collected. I said, Umar, how can you do something which Allah's apostle did not do?

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What? He didn't collect the Quran? No, he didn't.

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That's what Sahih al -Bukhari says. Umar said, By Allah, this is a good project.

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Umar kept on urging me to accept his proposal, till Allah opened my chest for it, and I began to realize the good in the idea that Umar had realized.

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Now, we've read this before, and I just point out to you, that even as they did this collation, for example, later on it says,

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So I started looking for the Quran and collecting it from what was written on palm stalks, thin white stones, and also from the men who knew it by heart.

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Oh, multiple sources? That's interesting. Why did the early people not just rely upon, just get a couple of the

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Quran together? Right there is what MDI says, right? But what was written, oh wait a minute, this says the

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Quran doesn't depend upon text. The Quran doesn't rely on textual transmission.

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But the sources say, Collecting it from what was written on palm stalks, thin white stones, and also from the men who knew it by heart.

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I think palm stalks, that's probably something that was written. I don't think you're talking to a palm stalker.

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Okay, could you recite for me? It's obviously something written. Same with thin white stones. So there's text right there.

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There's textual transmission. And obviously, written transmission is significantly more accurate, and significantly more reliable than oral transmission is.

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Especially when it comes to textual variation. So I found the last verse, Surah At -Tabah,

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Repentance with Abi Kazami Al -Ansari, and I did not find it with anyone other than him. Hmm, wait a minute.

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You didn't find it on white stones. You didn't find it on palm stalks. You didn't find it with the people who knew it by heart.

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This obviously raises the real issue that when those Quran died, something could have been lost.

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Something could have been lost. And even after this collation, once you get to Umar, they remember something that they hadn't collected the first time.

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Remember? Yeah. So again, we're not making this up. This is Sahih al -Bukhari. This is their own material.

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But there's more than that, and I pointed this out in whatever Christian news you know about the Quran. I did a really nice interview with someone today on that, and I really appreciated the young man who interviewed me because he had actually read the book and knew what he was talking about.

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It was a very enjoyable interview. We went very long. He'll get more than he bargained for,

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I think. I pointed out in whatever Christian news you know about the Quran, some hadith referenced

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Muhammad himself forgetting a portion of the Quran, only to say that section was abrogated anyway.

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Such would lead to differences in remembrance and recitation among his followers. For example, Aisha narrated that Muhammad said,

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Allah's Apostle heard a man reciting the Quran at night and said, May Allah bestow his mercy on him, as he has reminded me of such and such verses, of such and such surahs, which

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I was caused to forget. Sahih al -Bukhari 6558.

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Well, Muhammad forgot. He was caused to forget. The very next hadith says,

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The Prophet said, Why does anyone of the people say, I have forgotten such and such verses of the Quran? He, in fact, is caused by Allah to forget.

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That's 559. Likewise, in 550, The Prophet said, It is a bad thing that some of you say,

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I have forgotten such and such verses of the Quran, for indeed, he has been caused by Allah to forget it.

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So you must keep on reciting the Quran, because it escapes from the hearts of men faster than camels do. Are these inaccurate?

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Don't you think this might be good to inform folks at the MDI article?

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Finally, Suyuti records a relevant story. It goes like this. Al -Tabarani reports in the work

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Al -Kabir that Ibn Umar said, Two men used to recite a chapter taught to them by the

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Prophet. One night they awoke to pray, only to find that they were unable to recall even one letter of that chapter.

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The next morning they went to the Prophet to inform him of what had transpired. He said, It is of those parts of the

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Quran that have been abrogated, so ignore it. I would think, if you're really going to be seriously addressing the issue of the transmission of the text of the

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Quran, that you might want to include this material, which I didn't make up.

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It is right there in the Islamic sources themselves. I think that needs to be.

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Chris in channel just said, Are camels fast at escaping? I think they can be, yes. I think that Chris should have to chase a camel, now that he asks that question in channel.

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Okay, so there's the article that I wanted to address from the MDI website.

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I appreciate you listening to that. Now, let's get to the clips.

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I don't know what's going on. We're having technical issues today, aren't we?

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We've had a little problem with the microphone. A little while ago, the lights were doing the

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Wattusi thing on us. Sometimes the electrical quality in Arizona, especially during the summer, isn't the best that it could be.

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So that may have just been all it was. I don't know. But I tried to set up bookmarks in VLC in the video that The Atheist posted of the

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Saiten, Brunke, Matt Dillahunty debate. And they were right yesterday.

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I click on them today, and they're like 30 seconds off. And do you think someone snuck in last night?

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Well, you were saying that all your sound settings got all messed up. So I'm sort of wondering if someone came in and just had fun playing with buttons and stuff last night.

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I mean, I'm starting to wonder. So I'm going to have to sort of wing it a bit.

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I've got the times on the screen. See right there? There are the times. Actually, I see that.

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But it's not going to be quite as exact as I would like it to be. Why am I doing this?

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I've been asked to. A lot of people have asked, are you going to review the debate and stuff like that? It's a little dangerous for me to do this for a few reasons.

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One of the reasons is, unfortunately, there are turf wars that have developed in Reformed apologetics.

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I try to avoid getting involved in such things. I think it's really good.

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When I'm standing in a mosque and South Africa's in place, it really gives me perspective when

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I come home to go, I don't know. That's really all that important to get all upset about.

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If someone disagrees with my methodology or how I handle stuff, fine.

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I don't care. Unless you're going to tell me I'm doing something wrong or I'm doing something evil.

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That's different. But if you've got a different way of doing things, great. God didn't make us all the same way. I can look at how other people debate and go, well,

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I would have done this, I would have done that, I would have answered differently. But the fact of the matter is, there are some people who have far greater training than I do in certain areas.

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They are going to feel very, very comfortable going to certain areas that I'm not and vice versa.

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I like when folks ask Bible questions, especially when they think they know something about the original languages.

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Let's go there. This is good. Other people, not so much. I hesitate a little bit to get into this because I know people on both sides of this dispute that's been going on between Sai's side and the

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Choosing Hats guys. I just go, guys, come on.

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Let's grace this one, shall we? If you all have different ways of looking at it, talk it out and then move on.

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I'm not taking sides in doing this. This is just a real popular discussion right now.

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I think I could add something to some of the responses. Secondly, you need to be careful

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I've heard so many wild and insane things aimed my direction by people who have never sat in front of an audience to debate, especially in front of a hostile audience.

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This was clearly a hostile audience. This was clearly a primarily atheist audience. I happened to see the

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Twitter feed from David Silverman.

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I've debated Silverman. Silverman is not a deep thinker. He's currently president of American Atheists.

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I guess he was there. I saw his tweets as he was tweeting away. Very arrogant, very surface level, blah, blah, blah.

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Unless you've sat there, I think Sai will probably go,

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I'd like to hear what James has to say because he has sat there. I've been there with Dan Barker and I've been there with David Silverman and others in that situation.

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I know what it's like to sit behind that weird little hotel table with the always annoying little skirt they put on it that hasn't been

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I'm looking at the picture right now that hasn't been ironed in about 47 years. I know what it's like to be in front of a hostile audience.

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Unless you've been there, you might want to be a little less than nasty in your comments because you don't know what went on beforehand.

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You don't even know what's necessarily going on right at that time. You may be watching it, but there may be stuff going on you don't know about.

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There's a lot of stuff there. Keep that in mind when evaluating what any of us do.

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I was sort of glad that when we did the debate in the mosque in South Africa the camera panned around so you could see what

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I was looking at. Put yourself in my shoes and ask yourself the question would

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I be impacted by being in a mosque where people are sitting on the floor in the prayer room?

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Does that allow you to have absolutely perfect clarity of thought at all times?

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That's why if there's a moment where one side takes longer to answer a question everybody jumps on those things.

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Most people do not evaluate debates in any meaningful fashion. I know that.

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That's why it doesn't bother me a whole lot when people completely miss the point of the debate.

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I realize most people have never been taught how to evaluate a debate in the first place. One thing is awful clear in Western society today people are impressed normally by the bad arguments rather than the good arguments.

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I can't worry about those folks. I can't be of help to them. How can

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I be of assistance to people who just aren't thinking well?

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Just who are impressed by bad argumentation. Should I start using bad argumentation?

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Some people seem to think, be pragmatic, use bad argumentation, go for the emotions. My commitments won't allow me to do that.

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Can't do it. That means there are going to be people who are not going to find me to be their favorite apologist because they've got standards that are very different than mine.

27:51

That's just how that works. I've got two brief segments from the cross -examination or the one person in charge of the conversation and all the rest of them were audience questions.

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Let's get to them. Let's make sure I'm plugged in here. Here's the first section.

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Do we have everything working in there? We're ready? Let's do it. You're not an evidentialist anymore even though once upon a time you were.

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I would say that I'm the ultimate evidentialist. All evidence points to the existence of God. A presuppositionalist is the ultimate evidentialist.

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I don't say special evidence points to God. I say that you can't make sense of any evidence unless you start with God. But you don't present evidence in any defense of God anymore because...

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I present evidence when I share my faith. I go for a walk. I look up at the stars and I actually laugh that there's people out there who look at the sky and deny that God exists.

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I present evidence when I share my faith. But when somebody says, you're nuts for what you believe, then I don't put them in the judge's seat and God on trial.

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Now, those of you who have seen my debate with Dan Barker at University of Illinois will remember that one of the slides

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I put on the screen before I talked about a fact of natural science was that I clarified and I asserted and I made sure that the audience understood that I was not putting them in the position of being judges.

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And how you communicate that is going to depend upon the individual.

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But it is something that we have to communicate. That we are not submitting

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God's truth to the judgeship of a creature whose mind possesses maybe one thousandth of one percent of all the knowledge that God possesses.

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And that's being very generous, obviously. So, I appreciated the assertion that we are the ultimate evidentialists because we don't believe there's any such thing as anything in the created order that does not testify to the lordship of Christ.

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If Jesus Christ created all things, if Colossians chapter one is true, then there's no such thing as a neutral fact.

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Every fact is a fact because God made it to be that way. And I find this to be a powerful proclamation that most people have never heard before.

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And if you are trusting the spirit of God to prepare the way for your proclamation, that's the best way to go.

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Best way to go. And so, I understand what

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Psy is saying here. He's saying, look, I'll present these things when

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I am presenting my faith. But if someone has put themselves in the position of judging

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God, then I will not do that because I will not allow them to be judged.

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I agree at that point that we have to be very careful about that.

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I don't necessarily do it the same way that Psy does in this debate. And that's what most of the other clips are about.

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So, we continue on. In the past, and I apologize for bringing up the past because we haven't spoken much.

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By the way, just, go ahead. Remember when we had this problem?

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The glowing seraphim? This is always what happens when you try to videotape something in a hotel.

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They have these goofy lights and they're not all that bright, really. But they're always in the way and there's nothing you can do about it.

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Which debate was that we had? Well, we've had a couple of them. And that's just a plain old cheapy light fixture back there, but it's just incredibly annoying, especially to videographers that it looks like some space alien creature sitting there, but that's just the way it goes with them.

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And I'm not talking about Psy's head. No. That's what someone would say about me. You'll have every opportunity to correct this, but you've said that God reveals things to you in such a way that you can be certain.

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To everybody. Well, for now, we'll just stick with you. Well, I say he reveals things to everyone.

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I understand that. That's what I say. How does that work? You know, that would be a very good question if you could know that you weren't a brain in a vat.

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Ah. I understand what he's saying, but that's not how I would respond. I think this is a valid question.

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Psy's trying to go to the presuppositions here. I understand that. But I think that's about the fourth or fifth time to say it.

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And my response at that point would have been I am a creature.

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I am made by Jesus Christ, who is the creator of all things.

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And the word that Jesus Christ has identified as being from God, being

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God speaking to me, is specifically designed by God to communicate those things to me that I need to know to honor him as God.

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And that you, Matt, are not only suppressing the natural revelation that God has given to you, but that likewise you do not have any sound foundation for rejecting the written word of God that has been preserved down through the ages.

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Now, of course, I have a real comfort in going into issues, and one of the last ones,

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I think the very last clip I have, is where someone mentioned the Bart Ehrman stuff. That's my area of strength, and so I could tell by Matt's response that he's clueless, as most atheists are.

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That all they do is, it's funny, even when they read

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Ehrman, it's plain to me they don't understand what he's saying. The audience question guy, we'll get to it, remember this when we get to the end, the audience question guy clearly went way beyond what even

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Ehrman would say. So they don't know. So I'm comfortable going there, and so I would press this, and what it does is it's relevant to the answer to the question, and it also gives me another opportunity to proclaim the

35:04

Lordship of Christ, and I think God's glorified in that, and to make application of the Lordship of Christ in the area of knowledge.

35:13

Now, Psy does that out of the times, but in response to him saying, how can God reveal things to you that you can be certain of?

35:24

Again, he's going to say, hey, God can do that. That's right. In fact, let me, I think that's what he says right here at the end.

35:31

So you're not going to answer the question? No, I would say it's irrelevant. Your question presupposes that it's happened. What my question presupposes is irrelevant to whether or not you're willing to answer, and give the explanation that no presuppositionalist has ever done, which is, how is it possible for God to reveal things to you in such a way that you can be certain?

35:47

Because he's God. God can do that. Okay, now, yes, he's God. God can do that.

35:54

But I think we can go beyond that, without in any way saying to the atheist, and I'm going to allow you to judge this, because we know more about it than simply

36:04

God has done it. And that goes to our doctrine of Scripture, and to our doctrine that Jesus Christ, as the

36:12

Incarnate One, pointed men to the authority of the Word of God, and held them accountable as if God had spoken to them.

36:19

So I see we can make a connection between the overarching lordship of Jesus Christ, and then the authority of Scripture.

36:25

He is the Word of God enfleshed. It is the Word of God revealed.

36:31

The point is that he, as our creator, makes us in such a way that he desires to communicate with us, and when he communicates with us, he can then reveal truth to us in such a way that, as he said in his prayer to his father, sanctify them thy word, thy word is truth.

36:49

So, I realize, and I fall into this sometimes myself, you'll hear someone call into a radio program, for example, a talk show, and as soon as they start quoting from the

37:05

Bible, what happens? Well, we need to go to commercial break, and well, we need to, you know, people just want to hear.

37:11

And so I think sometimes we fall into the trap of going, well, I'm not going to go there, I'm not going to say those things. But in this instance,

37:18

I think there is an opening there to to really say, oh, you really say no presuppositionalist has ever answered this?

37:26

Now, if you're looking for some kind of naturalistic, materialistic process, then you're obviously missing the boat.

37:35

But what I am saying to you is that if Jesus Christ is the creator of all things, and if God communicates, if there's communication between the members of the

37:45

Trinity, and then clearly he wants to communicate with his creatures, he's going to make us capable of receiving that revelation that he deems proper for us to receive.

37:55

How is that in any way irrational? If God is communicative, how could we in any way shut his mouth?

38:03

How are you saying he could not communicate with us? And I think this comes up in one of the other audience questions too as well.

38:11

So let me see if if this is going to get me close here.

38:18

Yeah, see, that's supposed to be VLC, I don't know what you did to me here, but let's go to some of the audience questions here.

38:31

113. Okay, here's the first guy who talked to Psy. It's very hard to get it right where it needs to be, so we're going to have to listen to some stuff that we don't necessarily want to.

38:44

I'll hold the mic. My question is for Psy.

38:50

Psy, your first premise is flawed. The premise says it is reasonable to believe what is true, but that glosses over whether our minds can know that something is true.

39:01

If a blind person is told that a painting is by Van Gogh, that is a true statement. It may be reasonable to believe it, but the blind person cannot know it.

39:10

Similarly, if we are talking about God, we are talking about someone who is qualitatively over, above, beyond, anterior to everything else that exists.

39:22

There is no possible way that any of us, with our limitations of three dimensions of space and one of time, could possibly know such a thing, whether it happened to be true or not.

39:35

This is why I wanted the questions written down, by the way. Yes, any more than a goldfish in its bowl seeing me standing in the living room could tell whether I was also suspended in water.

39:49

Now, what's the immediate response to this? No. Yeah, I know.

39:57

Well, that's what Psy was saying. It would be nice if these were written down ahead of time. Again, I'm just asking people in the audience.

40:06

Put yourself in Psy's position. Put yourself in my position because these are the kinds of questions you're going to be getting on the airplane and the bus and the train and sitting at the soccer stadium or whatever.

40:20

We are being called to be salt and light in a secular humanist society and we can sit here with one another and go,

40:31

Oh, these people, can't they think straight? But that doesn't accomplish anything when you've got to talk to the guy. So, you've got to be able to hear what he's saying and recognize what is inconsistent.

40:46

Here is a man created in the image of God but he's not thinking properly.

40:53

Here is fulfillment of Romans chapter 1. There it is. Professionally wise, the dialogue in the mind not working correctly.

41:04

Improper information, improper application. There it is.

41:10

So, how do you respond to him? As you're listening to him, you should be hearing what he's saying that is inconsistent.

41:19

He's using the goldfish in the bowl. Well, what's the problem?

41:26

There's no meaningful relationship of creator -creation between the person outside the goldfish bowl and the goldfish.

41:33

He's completely missed the Christian understanding of God as creator, man as creation, and what we were talking about before, the desire on God's part to communicate with his creature.

41:49

And so, he's missing the fundamental assertion of Christianity and that is that God has chosen to communicate to his creatures in a fashion that is commensurate with their abilities.

42:04

So, if God wants to communicate with the goldfish, guess what? God has the capacity to do so because he made the goldfish.

42:12

And he also made the goldfish bowl, and he made the water, and he made all the sensory organs of the goldfish.

42:18

And if he wants to communicate with the goldfish, if he designed all of it, he can jolly well do so, and it seems incredibly silly to say otherwise.

42:26

But they don't have a creator anymore that made the goldfish bowl or the goldfish.

42:35

And that's why he says, I disagree with your assumption, blah, blah, blah, blah.

42:40

What's your answer? I didn't hear a question. Do you have a specific question?

42:46

Yes. How can it be reasonable to claim that to know something when our very minds are so framed that whether or not something is true, we could not possibly perceive it or authenticate it?

43:03

False assumption, completely false assumption, right at that point. That's where you've got to go and say, that's directly contrary to not only your own experience, but it's directly contrary to what the

43:16

Christian scriptures say, that God has communicated with clarity and has made us to be able to receive that divine revelation and act in accordance with it.

43:28

I disagree with your premise, sir. I'm sorry. I'm saying that we can know things for certain as God reveals them. And I think,

43:35

I'm really surprised that you disagree with the first premise that is reasonable to believe things which are true.

43:40

I find that remarkable. Who's your question for? Okay, so there was that encounter, and so I, oh!

43:51

Then we had this one. And, uh, now, Psy's a good

43:58

Presbyterian. I think he's a bit of a theonomist, too. So, um, here's, uh, this one came out of left field.

44:05

My question's for Psy, of course. I have a little problem understanding your position, so I have a quick simple question for you.

44:12

Sure. Do you believe that democracy is the best system in a civilized society?

44:19

No, actually. I believe theocracy is. Theocracy. Yes. Christian theocracy.

44:34

Alright. Now, did you hear the audience? I don't know where the question came from.

44:44

Obviously, there wasn't a moderator to determine what questions would be relevant and which ones would not.

44:49

Most of the questions wouldn't actually have survived, I think, if they had, but how would you answer that question?

44:57

Because a you know, from a biblical perspective, you know, my response would have been a little fuller.

45:07

I'm not quite as dry as Psy. I'm not as dry as Psy. I'm not sure how he'll take that.

45:13

But I would have said that while a democracy based upon biblical principles of morality and ethics could be blessed by God that obviously the and he does explain this somewhat a little bit later on,

45:34

I think was it in the closing statements? I don't remember where it was. It may have come up in another question. I forget where it was.

45:40

He did bring some of this up. Obviously in a in the ideal situation, what you have is a theocracy where vast majority of people in the society follow

45:55

Jesus Christ. They desire to honor God. They desire his law to be the standard by which they live their lives, etc, etc.

46:02

And what would that look like? Now I would point out that I don't think we have an outline for a

46:12

Christian theocracy in the New Testament. Because if you did, then you'd start running into the same problems that Islam is running into.

46:20

And that is the difficulty in transferring right, well, in the

46:28

Islamic context Sharia across language and cultural boundaries. So I would think that there would be multiple manifestations of what a

46:42

Christian theocracy would look like. But I think Sai just wanted to get folks talking at that point.

46:51

And just let it hang there. Knowing exactly what the result would be. And like I said, he expanded upon it a little bit later on.

46:59

Now we come to one of the areas where I had the strongest disagreement.

47:05

Okay. Who's your question for? It's for Sai. Sai, how can you trust the

47:11

Christian God? Your Bible has him lying from Genesis chapter 2 and stating that humans will die if they eat the fruit.

47:18

Yet they, meaning Adam and Eve, actually lived for hundreds of years after eating said fruit. Well, I don't normally do

47:23

Bible studies with professed atheists, but that's a misreading of the text. They did die that day. They died spiritually.

47:34

They died in a completely imperceptible way. Now, did you catch that? The reason

47:40

I kept it going is right at the end, someone in the audience said they died in a completely imperceptible way.

47:46

Well, to you, Mr. Atheist, yes. It was not imperceptible to God or to Adam or to Eve or to the angels or to all of creation.

47:58

But to you, who cannot get your eyes off of your shoelaces, yeah, it may have been imperceptible.

48:08

Again, I understand what Sai is saying when he says,

48:14

I don't do Bible studies with atheists. Obviously, I would have felt a real strong necessity to couch that in different terminology.

48:27

In the same way, I think Sai knows I wouldn't have shown up at an atheist event with a toilet seat either.

48:33

But again, we're different individuals and he gets to answer to the Lord for that, not me. I don't pretend to judge him on that.

48:44

It's just not something I would do. In this situation, I would want to communicate what he eventually does.

48:54

Maybe he just likes to do this in a Socratic way. He eventually will explain that, look,

49:04

I am not going to allow you to stand in judgment over God's word. It's not appropriate for me.

49:11

What I would say to someone is not that I'm not going to allow you, but that you have no business doing this.

49:18

It's not up to me. You need to understand you're the creature of God and you're going to be judged by these words.

49:25

If you stand in judgment of them, you're only destroying yourself. My response to the woman's question would have been to first correct her misunderstanding of the text.

49:42

I would have done so by making a positive assertion. My positive assertion would have been, well, it's interesting that you'd read it that way because I don't read atheist books the way you read the

49:52

Bible. I want to actually understand what the atheist book is saying and I'm not going to interpret one part of it in contrast to another part of it unless it's very obvious that the author has no clue what he's talking about.

50:02

If you look at the Genesis account and allow the rest of the Bible to speak to the same thing, then

50:08

Psy was exactly right. Spiritual death took place. That's plain from the text itself.

50:13

That's plain from the disruption of the relationship between Adam and Eve and their children, between Adam and Eve and the rest of the creation.

50:21

Something very clearly has taken place and it's something very fundamental. It's something very large. You have completely misunderstood it.

50:28

I would just ask you, ma 'am, why have you misunderstood it so badly when a simple reading of the text would have corrected the problem?

50:37

Then, if I had felt I still had the time to do so, and this is where every person who does a debate, you have to make decisions as to how much you're going to be able to say and how much you're not going to be able to say, and only you, sitting there, knowing what's been said beforehand about how we're going to handle things, only you can look around and see how the audience is reacting, responding.

51:01

I can't judge somebody else. Maybe Psy didn't feel like he had the time to do that. I don't know. I would have said that, and then if I had had time, then

51:10

I would have made an application in regards to communicating the same idea of not doing

51:18

Bible studies with atheists, but I would have said it somewhere along the lines of, you know, it seems to me that atheists do not approach the

51:33

Scriptures with the self -professed open -mindedness and free thinking that they claim.

51:41

Let me just say to you, ma 'am, that I would encourage you to approach the

51:47

Scriptures with an attitude different than the one you clearly have, and that God will judge you for what he says, because the one who prophesied his own death, burial, and resurrection and rose from the dead said these were the very words of God.

52:03

Just a different way, you know, I've had time to think about these things, and when you're sitting there, you have no time at all.

52:16

That's why debate is not for everybody. There are, I have said this, I don't know why people don't hear me saying this, but we can prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that I have said this over and over and over again.

52:31

And that is, there are all sorts of folks, a whole lot smarter than I am, that know a whole lot more about all these areas than I do, that should never debate.

52:42

Should never debate. Because I know scholars who would look like utter dolts in a debate, and yet they're brilliant.

52:54

They just can't multitask. And you have to be able to multitask. You are doing so many things at the same time that it's not even funny.

53:02

And you don't know, you know, here's the next guy up. Okay, you can see him on the screen there. Here's the next guy up.

53:08

What's he going to ask? You don't know? I have no way of knowing. You've got to try to be listening.

53:15

You've got to try to be evaluating. You've got to be trying to do a worldview analysis on what he's saying.

53:22

You've got to be trying to figure out from what he's saying where he's coming from, because sometimes you won't know. I'm exhausted after a debate.

53:31

That's why, you know, what we're planning in South Africa again, and what we did last time, is just, it's grueling.

53:40

Absolutely grueling on any type of mental and physical level. It is grueling.

53:46

It's tough work. It really is. Okay. I'm at 16. Oh, yep, yep. Okay, I have this one down.

53:52

So here's the next one. Question for me? First off, going back to what you quoted, scriptural authority.

54:00

Right. We've got things that you can go out and verify that is being wrong.

54:05

Like Jesus saying, the mustard seed is smallest in all the world. Now you, yourself, can verify under your

54:12

God's worldview that historically we have documentation that they used poppy seeds, which you can check as being smaller.

54:22

I mean, how do you consolidate that? I mean, are you not being deceived by the spirit of deception as Paul writes?

54:28

Okay, now, first thing, if you've never heard this one before, it's old.

54:37

It's old. I remember the first time I heard this argument.

54:42

It was on 16th Street. In my little office there, 16th

54:49

Street. Remember that? One of our number of offices that don't exist anymore.

54:55

Oh, yeah, they don't exist anymore. What was that guy, Lippard? What was his first name?

55:01

Jim Lippard. I was going to say Tim Lippard. Jim Lippard. Remember that? Do you remember when you debated

55:07

Jim Lippard? I think we actually might offer that anymore. As you're talking in the debate, you can hear

55:14

Jim Lippard going, and you're like, oh, this is creepy. Yeah, we actually had him in once, but this was in the old

55:23

BBS days. If you don't know what a BBS is, you're not old. Bulletin board system. Actually, that was the early

55:30

BBS days. It was. I had a 1200 It may have even been the 300 bod 300 -1200 bod modem days.

55:38

Yeah, it was. Anyways, Jim Lippard had posted this argument, that the mustard seed is not the smallest of all seeds.

55:45

Now, obviously, Gia's point is not to engage in a biological discussion of the relative size of seeds.

55:54

But I wondered about it. I wondered about it. And so I looked it up.

56:00

And I looked it up in a way that most people would not be able to look it up. I don't have it in here.

56:06

I do have it on my system now. Back then, I had it in hardbound copy, and it's in my office.

56:16

I looked it up in the Mishnah. And so what I did is I looked to see what the seeds were that were in essence kosher and were being used by the

56:31

Jews religiously. Poppy seeds are not included. Of the seeds that were used, the mustard seed is the smallest.

56:41

So, I don't think that's necessarily germane, but it certainly can shut up the atheist that wouldn't know what the

56:49

Mishnah was if the entire collected volumes went on their head. But it is the smallest of the ones that were cultivated and are listed by the

57:03

Jewish sources themselves, which I had both the Mishnah and the Talmud at that time. And most people did not have the

57:08

Mishnah or the Talmud at that time. So, here's a cocky atheist who thinks he's got the...

57:14

You know he's throwing this at so many different Christians. Probably never had anybody that just whacked him upside the head with a response.

57:35

Atheists have a hard time controlling themselves. I'll be perfectly honest with you. No unnecessary offense intended.

57:44

But you get a bunch of atheists together and they turn into a bunch of misbehaving children.

57:53

And I have evidence of this. We all have evidence of this. We've all seen it. Ask anyone who works at a hotel where the

58:02

American atheists have their convention. Yeah. We had them coming out and telling us years ago.

58:09

We held signs outside the American Atheist Convention when it was in Scottsdale. And they came out and told us stories you would not believe.

58:18

About the behavior of the atheists. You get them all together and it's like you get a bunch of rebels together and the

58:26

IQ just goes BOOM! It's gone. And you're seeing that right now.

58:33

In fact, bring it back up. See this guy down front. I don't know who this guy is. He must be sitting there.

58:38

David Silverman or something. But see the guy down front? Blow it up. Bring it up. There we go. See the guy down front?

58:44

YEAH! YEAH! OH YEAH! He's excited. He's excited.

58:52

If you're going to ask questions from the audience I'll answer that.

58:58

Jesus would not put his word up to the authority of you to judge whether it's true or not. I will proclaim the truth of scripture to you but I will not discuss the truth of it with you.

59:13

Sigh. Sigh. I totally agree but man that would be a whole lot more powerful after knocking the guy's head off with the truth.

59:21

And saying actually you're even wrong about that but let me tell you where you're really wrong here.

59:27

See that's that's that's just how I would handle something like that.

59:35

Saying that you will not answer any questions regarding the bible from an atheist? Not when an atheist says well it's false because of this.

59:41

Because I don't believe with their presuppositions. I will not put the word of God up to the test of the atheist.

59:47

I don't hear anybody saying it. You don't believe in atheists. Laughter. Applause.

59:54

Okay hold on. When I say atheist I mean professed atheist. Okay and then

01:00:00

Matt decided to try to calm the audience down and try to get someone to talk to him.

01:00:07

Oh good. Here's the next one right here. Okay so do you feel that you or I are qualified to question the word of God?

01:00:17

To question it? To disagree with the word of God? No. So scripture you would say is where knowledge begins.

01:00:26

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Jesus Christ. Okay so you should not question scripture right?

01:00:32

Not the truth of it. Okay so can I read a scripture to you? No I don't do bible studies with atheists.

01:00:38

I can't even read one. Now at this point I would not stop him.

01:00:45

I wouldn't do that. Again I understand and if Si wants to follow that but I would certainly allow him to read it so that I could then provide a meaningful defense of it.

01:01:03

Do I have an answer to every single question we ask about the bible? No. No I don't.

01:01:09

Has the Lord amazingly given me thought and insight at times that I would never have been able to have another time to answer some questions?

01:01:19

Yeah. Yeah, you know I don't talk about supernatural stuff all that much in that way because I don't use that as an evidence but man the

01:01:29

Lord has the Lord has done that more than once but I would I would allow him to read it.

01:01:35

I'd allow him to read it. Do you believe what you're reading is true sir? I'd actually like to know if you think this is true.

01:01:41

I think the whole bible is true. And I will reconcile it according to my presuppositions. I'll seek to reconcile that but I don't do bible studies with atheists.

01:01:48

Okay then I promise I'm not going to read you a bible verse. Okay. They said and boast we killed

01:01:54

Christ Jesus the son of Mary but they killed him not nor crucified him but so it was made from the

01:02:00

Koran. Correct. Do you agree with that? No. But that's God's word.

01:02:06

No it's not. But yes it is. Are you a Muslim? Are you a Muslim?

01:02:12

Well am I supposed to believe? You're saying that's the word of God. Are you a Muslim? Right. Are you saying it's not the word of God? I am saying it's not the word of God.

01:02:18

How do you know? How do I know that what the Koran says is not the word of God? If you want me to go through that refutation

01:02:23

I'll be happy to. What does the Koran say about the bible? That's my question to you. What does the Koran say about the bible?

01:02:29

Do you have any idea? It says it's a previous revelation of God and it says that it's true. It says to believe it.

01:02:35

And I'll ask the Muslim why do you not believe the bible today? Did you catch that? Matt is the one who said it says it's the word of God.

01:02:43

Did you catch that? And he's almost got the look on his face like okay this wasn't necessarily the best direction to go.

01:02:52

That was interesting. The Muslim will say because it's been corrupted and then I'll ask the Muslim what does your

01:02:58

Koran say about whether the words of Allah can be corrupted? And they'll say it cannot. See that's the problem. If the

01:03:03

Koran is true the bible is true and because the bible is true the Koran is false. Does anybody have a question?

01:03:11

Obviously I agree in broad outline with that refutation. Obviously I know a lot of Muslims that would object strenuously and make arguments against what was just said.

01:03:31

This is central to the current writing project I have with Shabir Ali. You can find on the

01:03:38

MDI website pretty much all the Islamic apologists will make differentiation between saying that the

01:03:49

Torah and the Injil were sent down they contain light and guidance at a particular point in time and that now they do not and the promises about the

01:04:01

Koran not being corrupted and challenge in light of the supremacy of Muhammad as the final prophet challenge the assumption that Sai just made there that you can just wholesale transfer the promise of non -corruption over to the

01:04:17

Torah and Injil. Now I don't believe that the author of the Koran thought that the Torah and Injil were corrupted.

01:04:23

I don't believe that he did. We've covered that rather in depth before. But anyway

01:04:31

I think that's an appropriate direction to go but I would also say that if Sai runs into some of the people

01:04:39

I run into regularly he'll want to listen to some of the debates we've done to go a little bit more in depth on that.

01:04:45

Again, he may have just been doing that briefly because of the time issue. Okay, to 120.

01:04:53

Okay, there's only two more. There's only two more. And they actually got some in there, some questions for the other fellow because he was looking bored and depressed there toward the end.

01:05:08

This is a question for Sai. My question is, is it possible that God has supplied you with a revelation that is at least in part false?

01:05:16

And I have a specific example. Could God have lied to you about the path to heaven, and I'm going to use your phrasing here for reasons that are sufficient to God?

01:05:25

No. And you know that.

01:05:32

Yes. God cannot lie. Um I don't know.

01:05:38

I just thought of a couple things that I would be interested in Sai's response to.

01:05:50

And that is, for example, God bringing judgment upon certain people, sending a lying spirit.

01:06:00

you know I just would have looked for a fuller response based upon something positive there, and that, for me, my response would have been focused upon God's purposes in revealing himself for salvation, and the consistency of that revelation over time, and how consistent that is with scripture.

01:06:27

I wouldn't have just simply said, no, God does not lie. Because the response would have been, but he sent a lying spirit into the mouths of the false prophets to bring destruction upon Israel.

01:06:38

And if a person refuses to love the truth, God will cause them to love a lie.

01:06:44

So there is judgment. And so I could have also raised those issues and said, you know, if I'm consistently rejecting

01:06:51

God's truth, then he could cause me to love a lie. But it seems, sir, that the greater probability is that's the situation you're facing.

01:07:00

Because then at least I can give a word of warning at that point, as well as provide that foundation.

01:07:06

So, just wanted to add that one in. One more. One more.

01:07:13

Okay. Now, I put this one in here. I mentioned this one before.

01:07:22

Here we have a perfect example of the, you know,

01:07:29

I don't think for a moment that Bart Ehrman cares about what I'm about to play. I don't think for a moment that the guy cares that he hasn't actually understood

01:07:38

Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman made the money off the audiobook he listened to.

01:07:44

I think that's all Bart Ehrman cares about. But here you have the perfect example.

01:07:51

The perfect example of the society wanting reasons to disbelieve and therefore grabbing hold of whatever's available.

01:08:06

This is This is sad, in my opinion, but here we go.

01:08:15

All right. If you did mock, it wounds me one bit.

01:08:20

I think there's a place for it, but I don't think I engaged in it. If I felt that I was owed an apology,

01:08:26

I would definitely have said so. My question is for Matt. On my drive down, I listened to an audio copy of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, and it made me really wonder about how accurate any of the information or any of the words in the

01:08:40

Bible that are being currently used are. Do you think it's reasonable for someone to base an entire worldview, religious philosophy on the current

01:08:49

Bible because of how different it is from any of its oldest sources?

01:08:56

Now, I know that Bart Ehrman will confess that the

01:09:05

New Testament is the earliest attested work of antiquity, the most widely attested work of antiquity.

01:09:13

I think he would say it's the most accurately attested work of antiquity. And what you're seeing here, remember that atheist program where the atheist had

01:09:26

Bart Ehrman on and he was just all excited, you know, and then he asked Bart Ehrman, so what do you think the

01:09:32

New Testament was originally about? Since it's been changed so much, what do you think it was originally about? And Ehrman's like, same thing it's about now.

01:09:42

Because when you really start digging into Bart Ehrman's most important textual variants, it's about stuff like, well, was

01:09:57

Jesus angry in Mark? Or does Hebrews 2 verse 9 say

01:10:02

Jesus died by the grace of God or apart from God? It's real little, teeny, tiny stuff like that that in no way changes the message of either book, even though Bart will say, well, and why is it that atheists hear him?

01:10:20

Not part of it is because he does not take nearly enough time to keep them from doing it because he doesn't care.

01:10:26

In fact, he may want that. But what you're seeing in here is the atheist mind going beyond even what

01:10:39

Ehrman gives in misquoting Jesus and building an entire castle of fantasy out of it.

01:10:51

There you saw it. And Matt, in the response, is clearly clueless.

01:10:58

He has no idea. He knows nothing about the transmission of the text. Former Christian still knows nothing about meaningful translation, collation of manuscripts, anything like that.

01:11:09

Anything like that. Atheists, in general, are pretty weak on that particular area.

01:11:16

There's some of the things that I wanted to address in that particular debate, and hopefully you found those things to be somewhat useful and helpful to you.

01:11:30

Okay. In the time we have left, switching gears yet again. We've covered a wide variety of stuff today.

01:11:38

And where else can you get such a wide variety of things? And, by the way, has anyone noticed?

01:11:45

Has anyone noticed? The Borg light looks a little less wild than it used to.

01:11:55

You compare. Go back. It's not as meh as ouch.

01:12:03

I don't like when I do that. Oh, now it's stuck under the thing here. It's a little less meh than it's been in the past.

01:12:09

You know why? Did any of you see the picture I posted on Facebook yesterday?

01:12:16

Mr. Pierce complained about it. Been trying to get me on Facebook and then complains when

01:12:21

I go on Facebook. I can't win this guy. It's just amazing. But I put all my lumen glasses together in one spot on my desk.

01:12:31

It's beautiful. It's an explosion of color. For me, it's just perfect.

01:12:38

A Borg would just love it. I was trying to get my little blue one to work.

01:12:47

I couldn't get it to work. I'm looking at the adapter. Long story short, this one is 6V.

01:12:57

The one the same size as blue is 12V. I just swapped the adapters.

01:13:04

This poor little 6V thing has been getting 12V since it's been in here. I hope it's not permanently damaged.

01:13:12

It looks much more normal now than it did before. I assure you the lava lamp has got the right one going.

01:13:21

It would have been really interesting if we all of a sudden had flames come up in the background during the birth of one of the programs.

01:13:29

Not that interesting. I don't think I'd be interested in that at all. Yeah, you made all the stuff back there.

01:13:37

Is it fireproof? I don't know. Stuff inside should be. Yeah, that's about all.

01:13:45

Things burn, and it's not good to burn things. It's got the right adapter now.

01:13:53

It's happy. The other little blue one is happy. It's got a 6V adapter. All is well.

01:14:00

I'm going to have to come up with an interesting name for this segment. Oh, you don't have to include that segment.

01:14:07

The Borg Light segment or something like that. You can skip over it. It's only a couple of minutes. Anyway, you're not as fun as you used to be as you're getting older.

01:14:24

Thanks a lot. I'm going to start making you do stuff on this program other than just the stuff over there. Anyway, this morning on a really tough ride that I did.

01:14:36

I did a really, really tough ride. I saw heart rates this morning I had not seen for a very long time.

01:14:44

It was cool. Anyway, I did a segment called Death by Hill Climb.

01:14:51

I had set a PR on it a couple months ago of two minutes. I wasn't even trying to PR it today.

01:14:58

I was trying to PR a whole section. I did it in 1 .57. That's one of the steepest sections of climbs in all of Phoenix.

01:15:05

It gets up to 18%. I was very happy with myself. Anyway, before I did the really tough stuff and then after I did the really tough stuff,

01:15:17

I listened to a new book that just came out called

01:15:24

An Introduction to Molinism, Scripture, Reason, and All That God Has Ordered.

01:15:29

It is an e -book from Max Andrews who works with William Lane Craig.

01:15:36

He's up in Scotland right now. He's come into our channel a good bit in the past.

01:15:42

We've had some interesting conversations. I saw

01:15:47

An Introduction to Molinism. I'm up for that.

01:15:54

I'd like to see what he has to say. I got it on Kindle and of course converted it to MP3 and listened on my ride this morning.

01:16:07

First of all, it's not An Introduction to Molinism. I would suggest he reconsider the title.

01:16:14

As soon as I started writing and listening to it and reflecting on how much of the very first pages are clearly a response to me and to be honest with you and again,

01:16:32

Max, I'm an author. I've been doing this a little while longer than you have. I understand motivation and I understand that you have taken very personally much of what

01:16:49

I've said when you shouldn't have. But when you're writing, you've really got to invest a little more effort in thinking about who your audience is and what you're trying to accomplish with them.

01:17:04

And anybody who's actually looking for An Introduction to Molinism is going to be completely lost.

01:17:13

Utterly lost from the start. Because you have an audience in mind and it's me.

01:17:20

Well, as much as you want to say I don't have a clue about Molinism, I know more than the average bear does. If I can listen to as much of William Lane Craig, read as much of William Lane Craig and all the other stuff.

01:17:33

Where did I put it in here? Oh, yeah. Molinism, the contemporary debate from Oxford, there's the only wise

01:17:47

God, there's Flint's divine providence, there's Molina, there's

01:17:52

Decker and we've even got time and eternity here. I am not a philosophical powerhouse and don't pretend to be, but I ain't stupid.

01:18:06

If you're going after me with only one question, one quotation, but you and I both know that so much of this stuff is aimed at the comments that I've made.

01:18:16

If someone else doesn't have that background, they're going to have no idea what you're talking about.

01:18:23

I knew what you were saying because you were disagreeing with me, but what about your audience?

01:18:31

I was left going, this is not introduction to Molinism, this is introduction to Max Andrews verifying his commitment to Molinism in light of interaction with James White and that's not a really good ground for writing a book.

01:18:56

It's really not. Then I was really bothered by one thing.

01:19:08

When I got back, took the time to open the book and look up something that I had seen and what

01:19:18

I found was, you bringing it up over there?

01:19:24

You see it? Okay. What I found was, I'm quoted one time, now there are a number of places where I am paraphrased, but you didn't bother to tell people that that was me.

01:19:38

I get quoted a single time. Here's what it says, this is location,

01:19:48

I wish it had page numbers, location 61 of 991 if you're looking at the

01:19:56

Kindle edition. James White has even claimed that Mormonism is more biblical than Molinism.

01:20:03

In his webcast in early to mid April 2014, that's a shot in left field placing

01:20:10

Molinism amongst cultic understandings of the Bible. I couldn't make this up.

01:20:20

I looked at that and I went, I've said a lot of things about Molinism.

01:20:29

When I hear about God doing the best he can with the charge he's been dealt, when

01:20:35

I hear about God can't save everybody and maximum number of people, there's a lot of stuff that really bothers me.

01:20:49

I went, I don't think I said that. I don't think I said that.

01:20:55

What's more Max, you and I both know that, for example, sometime last week or the week before that,

01:21:04

I interacted with an entire article that had been posted online criticizing and I interacted with what it had to say.

01:21:12

And I'm tired of the Molinist hubris that, well, if you don't see it, you just must be stupid because we're the

01:21:22

Molinists, we know. Especially when you're not listening to what we're saying in response. Now the guy that I reviewed, he did listen.

01:21:29

I appreciated that. I could have more conversation with him. But there is this

01:21:36

Molinist hubris that, well look, things just are the way they are.

01:21:42

You don't need this truth maker view of reality and all the rest of the stuff. So I had to ask people in channel, could y 'all, anybody know what he's talking about here?

01:21:55

Because I don't and I'm certainly not going to have enough time over the dividing line today because I had a 10 .30 appointment to do a radio interview and stuff like that and I'm going to be jetting out of here in a few minutes.

01:22:05

I don't have time to track this down. Well, that's one of the things I love about the people in our chat channel is everyone jumped in and started looking for it.

01:22:16

And we've got some solid folks in channel. I don't always tell them that but it's a real resource.

01:22:25

Real good folks. Anyway, they found it. And what bothers me the most,

01:22:34

Max, here is that this was an aside. I think very serious criticisms that I've made of Molinism biblically and theologically.

01:22:46

You talked a little bit about the grounding stuff later on but I don't think it's nearly as in -depth as we've even gone on this program.

01:22:55

This was an aside. Rich interrupted me with a question and this was an aside.

01:23:04

And that's the one citation and it wasn't even accurate. Now, you said you're going to fix this.

01:23:09

I think you said on Twitter you're going to change it. Great. That's cool. I appreciate that. But it still doesn't make any sense as to why that would be the one thing.

01:23:20

I mean, I did an entire seminar right next to Biola years ago.

01:23:27

It was I think it was early it was either 2009 or 2010 it was before I lost weight.

01:23:35

Lost the rest of my weight. When you look at the videos. Why not go to the stuff

01:23:42

I've written and the stuff that is meant for presentation. An aside on the program rather than dealing with the substance just was beneath you.

01:23:56

And you seem to defend it in channel and that disappointed me more. I'm just going to play. This won't lead to one of those mirror infinite loops, will it?

01:24:07

No. I'm just going to play it. Here's what I actually said. Now remember, here's what the footnote said.

01:24:14

James White has even claimed that Mormonism is more biblical than Molinism. And saying that I was basically making

01:24:21

Molinists cultists. Here's what actually took place.

01:24:28

But they dutifully do their obligations. And so this was really a thought provoking sermon for me.

01:24:35

Why wouldn't they like God? Well, I almost hate to say it, but some people that I've talked to who come out of the

01:24:44

Calvinistic and Reformed tradition. You just had to go there, didn't you? I know, sorry. Because that's

01:24:49

Dr. Taunus tradition as well. But honestly, I've talked to people who come out of that tradition who

01:24:56

I think deep down inside really harbor a kind of dislike of God because of his predestinary and all controlling activity.

01:25:07

He's the one that's responsible for sending their loved ones to hell because that's the way he's chosen to do it.

01:25:13

And you just give God his glory because it's due to him. Give God glory, but you don't really like a person such as God as described in that sort of theology.

01:25:27

As someone on Twitter may have been even the person who pointed me to this on Twitter said, oh yeah, that objection could never be raised against Molinism.

01:25:42

Well, of course, it most definitely can be. Because Molinism has

01:25:50

God micromanaging every single event in time so as to put these free creatures that he knows will do

01:26:02

X because of middle knowledge into the circumstances where they'll do X. So you how can that not be?

01:26:14

I mean, the only way that the Molinists can get around that is by saying, well, I just never thought it through before. But you have an extensive divine decree in Molinism.

01:26:27

It's just limited by his middle knowledge, of course, to the world that he's decided to create given the cards he was dealt and all that kind of stuff.

01:26:35

But the point is that this kind of an objection could be,

01:26:44

I think, much more meaningfully raised against the Molinist God and the

01:26:50

Molinist tradition. Because you can't say that there is a purpose in any of the evil that we might experience, including the death of loved ones.

01:26:59

That just happens to be the way it was in the best of all possible worlds! It's just the best we could do!

01:27:07

Yes. I just don't understand why it is that we're the ones that have to explain the need for redemption.

01:27:15

The Arminians believe that there is a need for redemption. We believe there's a need for redemption.

01:27:20

Mankind has fallen, but somehow that's on the Calvinists' shoulders to burden and somehow the

01:27:27

Arminian doesn't have to explain this. It's all our fault because well, this is the way

01:27:32

God created everything. His answer would be that, from his perspective, since God has left it up to man's free will, then

01:27:42

God has done his best to save each person. That's why he does the amazing mind tricks in Molinism of going, well, you know,

01:27:53

God could have actuated a world where everyone who does not hear the

01:28:00

Gospel would not have responded positively to the Gospel in the first place. So, he's saying that God's done everything he can, and he's actually saving the maximum number of people possible.

01:28:11

He's saving everybody who would believe, but there are people who would never believe, and they're the ones who are actually lost. And so, you are getting to have all of your cake and eat all of it too.

01:28:22

You get free will, and you get a God who tries to save everybody, and you get the salvation of everyone who could possibly be saved.

01:28:29

Isn't it wonderful? Isn't that Molinism? Now, it doesn't make a lick of sense. It's about as biblical as Mormonism is, but you got it all.

01:28:37

And how is it that this God could not find it? Okay, did you catch that? There was the context.

01:28:46

What I was saying is that specific assertion of the maximal number of people to be saved, and all this silliness that goes along with it, is about as biblical as Mormonism.

01:29:00

That is, it has no biblical foundation. This is not something that the biblical writers ever considered, ever conceived of.

01:29:09

It comes from 1 ,600 years after the time of the birth of Christ, at the earliest, and is not exegetically derived.

01:29:18

Now, I'm going to deal with your stuff about exegesis. I think it's worth doing that.

01:29:25

But that's what I was talking about. And to turn that into saying Mormonism is more biblical than Molinism, and saying,

01:29:35

I can't make this type of stuff up, Max, something's affecting how you're hearing stuff.

01:29:43

And it's not coming from me. I think it's on your end. I think it's on your end.

01:29:49

So we'll be taking a look at that in the future, and we'll continue that probably very next time on the program.

01:30:00

It's going to be a little bit difficult in the future. Over the next few weeks, all the way into July, I'm doing a lot of traveling.

01:30:07

We're going to try to figure out some way of doing this with me on the road. We may have to go back to just the old audio format for a while, or...

01:30:17

Don't know. Don't know. We'll be thinking. We'll be thinking. We'll figure it out. But we won't leave you completely without the dividing line,