Helping Joe Rogan Know the Truth

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Some folks were kind enough to link me to examples of Joe Rogan repeat common mythology about how the Bible was collected, the canon, Constantine, etc., so I took the time today to deal with those issues, as well as respond to a number of claims made in one clip as Rogan interviewed Lawrence Krauss, a well known atheist and former professor at ASU. I think Joe Rogan would benefit greatly from viewing my 2009 debate with Bart Ehrman, found here https://youtu.be/5K-AOfj1Axg.

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Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We're coming to you on the last of our road trip,
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Dividing Lines. For this particular trip, 26 days, we have been on the road, and I've got a lot to do when
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I get home. At least that's what my wife says. And only going to be home for about 28 days, maybe a little less than that,
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I kind of think of it. Yeah, a little less than that. Before a 33 -day trip, which
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I designed, by the way, before my shoulder went completely crazy. So I have some really long days in there, much longer than I'm comfortable going.
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But there's nothing I can do about it now. I've already made all the reservations, and it's the only way the timing works. And yeah, it's going to be interesting.
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We'll do our best. But we are in Flagstaff, Arizona, which means I'm only two hours from home.
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Some interesting driving between here and there. Really steep downhills and really steep, one really steep uphill out of Camp Verde, if you've ever gone there.
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And I have to admit, being in Flagstaff, it makes me a little melancholy.
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I spent a long time up here, between 2011 and 2020.
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Training at altitude, we're at 7 ,000 feet above sea level here. And I just don't know how much of that I'm going to be doing in the future.
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It's a beautiful, beautiful area, really, really is. And it is great to be up here, and it's windy and cool and stuff like that.
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Got a lot to get to today. I am going to be talking about some Joe Rogan clips.
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So could I just say right now, it's called Fair Use. I'm going to be playing and responding to, answering questions about, even criticizing, because one of the clips is with Lawrence Krauss, who is a well -known atheist.
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And we're going to be looking at what Joe Rogan has said about the
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Bible, because clearly, you know, there's so many other times that I've, you know, when
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Joe Rogan's had Jordan Peterson on and things like that, you know, you can be impressed by what he reads and things like that.
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When it comes to his understanding of where the Bible came from, and what the process of translation is, and manuscripts, stuff like that,
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Joe Rogan has no idea what he's talking about. And we're going to hopefully, in a friendly fashion, correct his misunderstandings, and hopefully lots of other people.
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Maybe having his name in the title will cause people to watch that haven't watched before.
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I will try to remember to link to my debate with Bart Ehrman in the description, because a lot of the stuff we'll be talking about was addressed in that debate in 2009.
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But before we get to that, I, you may have seen, there's just so many, and I've got a cough going on, so I apologize ahead of time.
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I could actually, I can't actually mute myself, so I'll try to remember to do that in the future. Um, there's so much stuff that flies across our screen every day, that you just start, you just start forgetting.
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You know, I was just now looking at some stuff, and you know, there's this board -certified pediatrician doing
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TikTok videos, encouraging kids to come to this person and get puberty blockers without their parents' permission or knowledge.
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This just utter destruction of the family, destruction of gender, humanity, it, it won't last forever, can't, because any society infected with it that, that God in his mercy does not deliver from will be destroyed by it.
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It is anti -human, anti -life, it is the culture of death in its fullest expression.
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But one of the things that I saw over the past couple of days, I think it was just yesterday, was a professor, now
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I, I'm using air quotes there. This is a person, um, hired by a college, a university, and I guess that's what makes you a professor these days.
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There was once a meaning to that, it, it referred to advanced study in a field that allowed you to educate others accurately and fully about what your field of expertise is.
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Now with diversity, equity, and inclusion, it means nothing. A, a piece of paper from these institutions that have been taken over by this leftist insanity means nothing.
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I look at these people with PhDs, and I listen to them try to talk, and they, they can't reason their way out of a paper bag.
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They have no knowledge of any other field. They have no knowledge about how their field interacts with any other field, and as was demonstrated a decade or so ago now, you can write the most absurd, insane, stupid, foolish, childish papers and be published, as long as those insane, stupid, foolish, childish papers promote the narrative.
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Scholarship is dead in the West, not completely, but to do scholarship, you have to stay out of the spotlight, so you don't have to answer questions about whether you're including
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DEI goals and principles in your teaching, in your study, because DEI is the end of any type of academic seriousness.
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So, there's this woman, shabbily dressed, who comes up to a table, and this was at Hunter College, Hunter College.
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Professor Shalin Rodriguez comes up to a table, and there are two students standing behind the table, and they have materials set up, and they want to talk to people about abortion.
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They're pro -life students. I can't play it for you, because this professor can't do two sentences without dropping f -bombs.
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She's abusive, childish, just should not have a job at any serious institution, but that's all, all of them have been, have succumbed to this now.
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And then she becomes violent, and knocks stuff out on the students' hands, and knocks stuff off the table, and of course says that their being there, their words are violence.
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It's the, the stupidity, the utter lack of intellectual seriousness that marks the modern university campus that has succumbed to this attack is truly shocking.
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I don't think there would be any way to get someone like Shalin Rodriguez to do an academic debate.
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I don't, I doubt she has the intellectual capacity, training, and scholarship to do an opening statement, to control herself, to do rebuttals, to do cross -examination.
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I just don't think it would happen. And that's what we, that's what
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Christian parents are spending a hundred thousand dollars to send their children to sit in classrooms taught by these kind of people?
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I don't understand it. I really, really don't. But this is what has taken over.
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And it is connected somewhat to what I want to talk about in regards to the history of the
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Bible. Joe Rogan, like I said, is a, is a serious guy in many ways, and he engages serious conversations.
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But Lawrence Krauss, these leading atheists, not,
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I'm not talking about Joe Rogan, Lawrence Krauss, and the others, you know, the guys that get paid $25 ,000 to do a debate.
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These individuals, almost without fail, are willing to accept the most surface -level, childlike views of the history of the
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Bible. Now maybe it's just the whole field of debates, because I've often lamented that Christian apologists,
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I've never understood why Christian apologists in general are ignorant of the biblical languages.
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I've never understood them. And yet you think of most of the big names, can they, can they read from the
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Greek New Testament? Can they read from the Hebrew Old Testament? Can they preach, speak, check things out quickly?
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Do they have a meaningful capacity in the biblical languages? And the vast majority do not.
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I've never understood it. But then the atheists come along, and they will accept the most cockamamie ideas about the history of the
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Bible, and will repeat them, ad nauseum, over and over again, even when corrected. Now I would like to hope that if someone were to direct
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Joe Rogan to my debate with Bart Ehrman, or to this program, and he gets to see the answers to his questions, that he wouldn't repeat these things.
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But I know Lawrence Krauss would, and so you have to ask yourself the question, why is that?
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Why is there this kind of attitude amongst atheists, especially, and this willingness to accept utterly unscholarly, utterly indefensible historical claims about Constantine doing this, and all the rest of this kind of stuff?
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You know, part of it, I understand, is the fact that there aren't that many
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Christians that can provide the corrective. I get that.
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But still, if they did any kind of serious study, they would know that what they're saying, and where they're coming from, just simply isn't true.
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So I'm going to try to do this. I didn't have a whole lot of time getting set up.
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It was a long drive today. I had some interesting experiences along the way. Anyway, and I cannot explain what goes on on the
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Joe Rogan thing. I only see clips of the program, especially when really interesting people are on.
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But this first clip has, there's a guy sitting here in a sniper something, and Joe's, I don't know.
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I don't know. The video part leaves me completely baffled. I'm only concerned about what
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Joe Rogan himself is saying. So let's listen in, and let's respond to what is said here.
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I need to turn this up now so I can hear it, and let's do this.
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Okay, Rich, you're telling me that didn't work. Yes? No? Maybe? No, it didn't work.
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I don't know what happened there, because when we tested it, it worked fine. Yes, it did. It worked perfectly fine.
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Is the Mac audio channel open? Yep. Yep, sure is.
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Changed absolutely nothing. Channel four on, just like before.
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Hate when that happens. You test everything out, and then you go live, and there's demons in the electronics.
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I don't understand it. What I'm going to do is
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I'm going to go back to the old way of doing things, and I'm going to not pipe it through to the
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ATEM. I'm going to put it through MacBook Pro speakers, and I'm going to play it that way.
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And that's not how it should work, but it's old school, and we'll give it a shot.
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I apologize. Like I said, it worked fine just 15 minutes ago. So let's try this again, and oh,
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I'm sorry. I've been doing that the whole time, too. So here we go. Let's try it again. That's a really good point.
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The translations apparently are so difficult to do. Apparently, especially Old Testament, when they translated the
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Old Testament, they had to translate it. Think of all the different languages it had to go through. It was Latin and Greek and German and English and all these different languages that are so different.
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Like, have you ever used the translate button? Like, I follow a lot of Russian fighters, and their
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Instagram feed, they write in Russian, and I'm always like, oh, translate. It's a really cool feature, but you can tell it's not exactly what they meant because it's all f***ed up because their language is different.
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Like, the way they structure sentences is different. So English doesn't just plug and play. Right. You know, it's like sticking a
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USB 3 into a USB -A. Like, hey, this doesn't really fit. Right. Now add time.
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Add thousands of years and scrolls. In my games, one of the things changed. Yeah. The King James version.
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Okay, so at least you can hear it that time, and that's just how we'll stick with it in the future.
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Shouldn't work that way, but I don't know. I can't.
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I don't understand. The more complicated it gets, the more things you try to do, the more things break.
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Just sort of how things are. So we'll simplify. All right. I remember very clearly sitting in the first time
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I visited a Mormon word chapel many, many years ago. I sat through one of their presentations, and that was pretty much what the people there were told, is that the reason we can't really trust modern
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Bible translations or really trust the Bible any longer is because it went through all these different languages.
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And this is literally what the Mormon priest was saying to the people, and I'm just sitting there going.
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So the idea was, well, you know, Jesus speaks it in Aramaic, and then it's written down in Greek.
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So there's one place where you can have problems, and then they switch to Latin. So it's translated into Latin, and then it goes into German or forms of German and French, and they have to go through all this stuff before it finally gets to English.
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And so you lose something at this step, and you lose something at this step, and you lose something at this step. And so by the time you get to where we are today, no one really knows.
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You can't really tell one way or the other, which, of course, is utterly absurd.
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That's not what happened. We have Greek manuscripts of the
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New Testament that go back to the second century, the early second century.
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And we have over 5 ,800 Greek manuscripts of the
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New Testament. Then we have Latin that are translations from the Greek, Sahitic, Boheric, Coptic, all sorts of stuff like that.
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And when we translate modern versions of the Bible, we are primarily doing so from the
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Greek or, if you want to talk about the Hebrew, then we have the great manuscripts that have been used from the
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Mazarites in the ninth century. And then with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we left 1 ,000 years back in time.
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And there is no necessity whatsoever that there has been change over that 1 ,000 years, which was proven with the
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Isaiah Scroll, and now with the recently digitally unrolled Leviticus Scroll, where they can't physically unroll it.
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They use x -rays that can tell the difference between the content of the ink and the content of the now fossilized parchment.
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And so they can digitally unroll it and read it. It's amazing technology. And just like the
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Isaiah Scroll, no change. And these are from before the time of Christ.
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And so in a number of weeks, in September, it's my intention, anyways, at the
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G3 Conference to preach on the sovereignty of God from Isaiah from the
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Hebrew text without anything else. That's my goal. That's what I want to be able to do. Not using
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Latin, not using the Greek Septuagint, I've preached at G3 from the Greek Septuagint just a couple of years ago from Isaiah 6, but doing it differently this time from a different language, from the original
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Hebrew language. But this idea that it's a chain and it somehow goes from Greek to Latin and all the
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Greek manuscripts disappear. So all I have is the Latin and the Latin is translated into German and all the Latin manuscripts disappear.
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No, we have thousands of those manuscripts, at least 20 ,000
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Latin manuscripts of the New Testament. As I said, almost 6 ,000 fragments and entire
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New Testaments in the New Testament. In Greek. So that idea is very common in people's minds.
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But that's not where it came from. So let me just show you something here. Here is my desktop right now.
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This is Accordance Bible Software. This is the beginning of the Gospel of John. And here we have the
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Greek of John 1 .1. In the beginning was the
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Word and the Word was with God. And the Word, because it has the article, was
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God. So when I teach through John, I teach from the original languages.
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And if I wanted to, and I sometimes do. Of course, that would be right in the way.
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I can look at various New Testament manuscripts. Here's John 1 .1.
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Here's Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Washingtonianus, Codex Alexandrinus, and the various papyri such as P66 that contain this section of John, as does
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P75. And this is in a different form of Greek because it's unsealed Greek, what we would call majuscule or capital forms.
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In the 9th, 10th centuries, that changed. And they switched over to,
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I realize that's really, really small to you, but they switched over to the minuscule text we use today.
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But you can check out all of these things. You can examine all of these things as you are doing your translation, as you're doing your sermon preparation and things like that.
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So everything that Joe said about going through all these languages and about the
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Russian thing, the only thing that had any relevance was the
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Russian thing, because there's only one step there. That's Russian coming into English. Okay, if you are monolingual, if you don't speak foreign languages, then you can be troubled by the fact that in almost every situation, there are multiple ways of translating a phrase or a thought from one language to another.
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There are differences in grammar, syntax, layout. And there are some languages that are more
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Yoda -like than others. A lot of languages that want to have very particular layout of where the subject and the verb and the objects go and descriptors and phrases and all the rest of that type of stuff, then other languages just don't care.
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So there are multiple ways of translating. And that's one of the reasons why we have so many
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English translations. But there's always a way to test whether what is in that translation is accurately seeking to render the original meaning, or if it's off doing its own thing, like the
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New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses, or the Passion Translation, and the
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Scholar's Translation, all this kind of stuff that's out there that people have put out just to promote their own perspectives.
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But they're all translations of original languages. Now, there are instances where textual critical scholars will look at other languages, will look at the
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Latin manuscripts, look at the Boheric, look at the Coptic, to help shine some light on textual issues when there are differences between the
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Greek manuscripts. But the fact is, you can look at any modern translation, and in the forward it'll tell you what
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Greek New Testament is translating, what Hebrew it's translating. Normally today, it would be the
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Nessian 28th edition of the Greek New Testament and the Biblia Hebraica Stuca Tentia for the
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Old. But there will be places where a translation committee will choose to go with the
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Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. There are places where, in the
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New Testament, they're quoting from the Greek Septuagint, and so that's very relevant. And there will be notes. And anybody who really wants to dig in, the material is there to do the digging.
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It really, really is, if people are willing to invest the time. So let's go for, and I have no idea why
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Joe was wearing a NASA spacesuit, or what the other guy was doing. I'm lost.
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I have no idea. Well, this is interesting.
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I had this queued up. We are having tech issues today.
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There it is. I found it. Too many windows. And this window decided to go hiding under somebody else someplace,
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I guess. I don't know. But here is a conversation between Lawrence Krauss, an atheist, and Joe Rogan.
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And I want to interact with a number of the things. It gets to our subject toward the end.
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But there are a number of things. Having listened to it, I just wanted to go, wow, okay.
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And hopefully this will be helpful. Because again, these are the people that people are listening to. And so these are the objections that are going to be thrown in your direction.
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That's just sort of all there is to it. You can't get around it. So let's see how this works.
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I'm not going to change it. I'm going to do it over the air, the way we did it before. Let's see how this works.
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That's the problem with a lot of what's happening in our government. People think, you know what? I really want to believe in this absurd story.
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And therefore I refuse to accept evolution. If you're Mike Pence, the vice president of the country, you say, I don't believe evolution.
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Because it doesn't agree with my ridiculous fundamentalist ideas. And he said that in Congress, right?
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He said we shouldn't be teaching evolution in schools. We should be teaching intelligence design. And why?
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Because it offends his personal faith. Or maybe, possibly, these guys never actually engage with the evidence from the other side.
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And in fact, seem to believe that to do so is to give it credibility that it does not deserve.
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Because this is their religion. Darwinism is their religion.
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And the evidence for intelligent design is overwhelming. Absolutely overwhelming. I could show you stuff just, it would curl my hair if I had it.
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So good, so solid. They won't even, they cannot even think about the possibility.
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So you'll notice liberal use of absurd and all this kind of stuff.
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This is the new atheism. This is how they are. We continue.
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Perhaps. It might also be a political ploy. It might be a thing. Because he knows a large percentage of the country finds comfort in a leader that subscribes to the same sort of superstitions that they do.
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Yeah, that could be. He did this before he was in a national office. He was a congressman. I suspect he did it.
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It sounds like he believed it. But you're right. Who knows? Right. But the point is that we should realize that the only, that we shouldn't listen to that kind of nonsense.
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Right. Because we may not want, because there are a lot of people in this country who do think that evolution directly confronts their belief in God.
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Or the Big Bang directly confronts their belief in God. And therefore, they don't want their children to learn about that.
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But what an awful thing to do to your children, to withhold evidence about how the world really works.
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And of course, Lawrence Krauss wants to withhold evidence against his own position.
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They don't want any kind of fair debate. They don't want any kind. They don't want someone coming in and say, here's the evidence for intelligent design.
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Look, evolution can't explain these things. You take one thing out of this complex step, and it falls apart.
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You can't come up with this with neo -Darwinian micromutational evolutionary theory. It doesn't work.
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Well, you try to even get a hearing with these people.
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And oh, no. So is that abuse of their children? Is that abuse of all children? You want abuse of children?
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Just look at the educational system today. It is a child abuse system on every level.
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I had a friend tell me that someone had just contacted him yesterday that they had gone to a library at school to get some stuff for a summer reading program.
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Come around the corner and check out. And who's checking out the books, the summer reading program? But a fully bearded drag queen.
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A fully bearded drag queen. That's what we have now. The fact that the educational system has completely sold out to a discredited theory, but will not give up on it.
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These guys can't even admit, because this is central to their religion. This is central to who they are. And they can't go another direction.
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It's just not possible. Because you don't have to believe in the Big Bang, but it really happened. You don't have to believe in evolution, but it happened.
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It's like Philip K. Dick said, the science fiction writer, reality is that which continues to exist whether or not you believe in it.
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And so you may not want to believe in it, but it happened. And for you to withhold that kind of knowledge from your kids, because you're worried it's going to affect their faith, is in my opinion, child abuse.
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So you'll notice that we've heard this very often from folks on the East Side. Child abuse.
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I would argue that teaching children that they are ugly bags of mostly water, they have no transcendent purpose.
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They have no meaning. When they die, the world's not going to care. That they are a complete cosmic accident, or as Dan Barker put it, and I brought up in our debate at the
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University of Illinois many, many years ago now, that we are cosmic broccoli.
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We're cosmic broccoli. We have no more impact in the world and in this universe than a head of broccoli.
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And if it falls off the truck and gets run over by the next truck, nobody cares. The universe is not changed.
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And that's what we're telling our children. That's what this man wants to tell our children as well.
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It's their religion. We all have a religion. The difference is we have an empty tomb.
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They don't. We can look at all the evidence. So I, hey, ask my kids, did
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I teach them the evolutionary theory? Did I teach them Neo -Darwinian micromutational evolutionary theory?
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Of course I did. Of course, I was a biology major. And even though I went to a
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Christian university, I was the only creationist in the biology department. I mentioned before, the first book
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I read when I graduated was Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker, because I wanted to interact with that kind of argumentation.
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So should we teach our children what these perspectives are?
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Yes. Should we show them how to critically take these things apart?
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Yes. The other side will not allow that. Will not allow that at all.
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You're hindering their capabilities as an adult in a society which is highly technological to function effectively.
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But they're doing it because they believe it as well. I mean, it's right. I'm not believing. They think they're helping their kids.
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I don't know if you're a parent. I am. We've all screwed up our kids, right? We all do things for our kids because we think it's good for them.
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And sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. Good for them? No matter what these guys do, no matter what
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Lawrence Krauss does, he is going to steal from God's world because he's made in God's image.
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You can't avoid it. Why should you worry about what's good for your kids? How do you even know what's good for your kids?
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There was a time when there was a consistency from generation to generation as to what is good.
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Western society has lost that now to its detriment. But what was good for my great -grandfather to teach to his son, my dad taught to me.
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And that goodness had an objective grounding to it. Now there's no objective good at all.
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Look at our society. We're literally being told that the greatest good that everybody has to celebrate is mutilating kids' bodies, cutting off breasts and other genitals, and filling children with drugs that will make them sick, weak patients the rest of their lives.
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That's the greatest good we can know. And 20 years ago, anybody who tried to say that would have minimally been laughed off the stage, if not maybe beaten up in the parking lot afterwards, appropriately so.
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So no objective way of knowing one way or the other. And yet this is supposed to be good?
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I'm not saying these people are doing it because they want to hurt their children. They think somehow that not believing in God makes you a bad person.
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But there's no evidence of that. In fact, as Steve Weinberg, the Nobel Prize -winning physicist has said,
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Good person? How is that even relevant when you think we're nothing but stardust?
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We are just chemicals. We're moist robots. We're ugly bags of molested water.
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What's that mean? What's a good ugly bag of molested water in comparison to a bad one?
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I don't know. I have no earthly idea. Neither does he.
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Borrowing, stealing, borrowing, stealing from the Christian worldview, our language, our objective standards.
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He has to. He's living in God's world. He's not living in the world that he's telling other people about.
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But he said, so there are good people in the world. There are bad people. Good people do good things.
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Bad people do bad things. When good people do bad things, it's religion. Do you think...
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So when atheism led to the murder of 125 million people in the last century and into this century, what was that?
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Why do you say that's good or bad? Either way. If you didn't watch the debate that Jeff and I did with two atheists only a matter of weeks ago, take time to watch it and see.
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Once they're caught stealing from us, they can't stop. They can't stop.
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And this is one of the reasons that Jeff Durbin and I and Eli Ayala and others like us are presuppositional apologists.
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This guy has debated evidentialists, but they don't challenge him on this.
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Because they really can't. They've already granted to them something that they shouldn't have granted to them in the first place because that is their time.
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That religion in its earliest stages was, in a sense, primitive man with no science trying to figure out the world and trying to have some sort of rules, almost like a scaffolding in order to move to the next.
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If you see that it exists in so many different cultures, it might have been something along those lines.
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Or another possibility would be the reason you see it in so many different cultures, is it has a common origin.
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Maybe the revelation of God. As Christians say, that God has written his law upon our hearts.
40:35
That there is revelation given to the earliest cultures. And that's why there are flood stories all through the cultures.
40:42
And there's great similarities in law through all these cultures. Maybe that's because we live in God's world.
40:50
Possibly, you would think. It was their effort to understand the world around them based on what they knew.
40:56
It was noble. They tried to understand the world. And so there's nothing wrong with it. But claiming that we today should be guided by the world view of illiterate peasants, in the
41:07
Iron Age peasants who didn't know the earth orbited the sun, and wrote down, based on their beliefs at the time, they argued that should guide our life today when we discovered 100 billion galaxies in the universe and discovered all this stuff is ludicrous.
41:22
Ludicrous. I've often said, and with our
41:29
AI -driven transcription of all the dividing lines, and I think we're literally talking about all the dividing lines, the debates, sermons, it's all going to be available, which is scary to me.
41:42
It should be scary to you. It's like a Jack Chick track gone bad. I mean, we say that every word we speak will be judged.
41:54
But I was hoping to wait till heaven for that. It's going to be hitting me right between the eyes before them.
42:04
I have said for a very, very long time, what was
42:10
I about to say that I said for a very, very long time? It was the last thing that he was saying. Hold on a second here.
42:19
Our life today when we discovered 100 billion galaxies. I've said over and over and over again, and now
42:24
I remember where we're going. It is absolutely absurd. In fact, when
42:32
I spoke at GBTS on this trip, I made this statement at that time.
42:39
Every time I've addressed 1 Corinthians chapter 1, I have emphasized the fact that what we are asking people to believe from a humanistic perspective is ludicrous.
42:50
It's absurd. The creator of 100 billion galaxies actually entered into his own creation on a little planet called
43:01
Earth. If you start with the naturalistic presuppositions, that just seems completely insane.
43:10
It really does. And yet, here we are on this perfectly balanced planet, and we have this mountain of evidence of intelligent design.
43:25
This mountain of evidence. Oh, great. Ron DeSantis just texted me. Well, I'm sure.
43:33
I gave money to somebody a number of years ago, and that's it. It doesn't matter how many times you put stop, please, cease, desist.
43:41
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they're Democrats or Republicans. They're going to keep coming after you. And now
43:47
Ron DeSantis is coming after him. Anyway, it is completely absurdity.
43:52
But we have this mountain of evidence of the complexity of life, the balance of life here on this planet.
44:00
We have the fulfilled prophecies of the coming of Jesus. It is clear that there is a personal creator of all these things.
44:11
And then we have an empty tomb. And these gentlemen will not even think about those possibilities.
44:18
But I recognize, hey, if you don't start with a recognition of what
44:27
God has already done, if you don't start with an understanding of the coherence of the
44:32
Christian worldview, it just sounds completely ludicrous to them. I think that's why they fear actually studying it enough.
44:39
I think they fear reading someone like a Francis Schaeffer, because that's not the
44:48
Christianity they hate. And that's not the Christianity they refute all the time. I think that's an important aspect of things.
44:55
The universe has discovered all this stuff is ludicrous. So you're absolutely right. The birth of science and religion are the same.
45:02
And in fact, modern science grew out of religion. People point that out. And they say to me, how dare you talk about religion as being outdated.
45:09
Science grew out of religion. And I say to them, well, that's fine. But children outgrow their parents, right?
45:16
It's so great. No doubt, religious ideas and all our early scientists were religious because it was the only game in town.
45:24
What does it mean that children outgrow their parents? You mean their need for their parents?
45:29
Okay. But I never outgrew my parents. I became mature on my own.
45:39
But they provided to me such important foundational things.
45:46
So this idea, science somehow can outgrow its parents.
45:55
Scientists are some of the least reflective people I've ever met. When it comes to worldview, when it comes to having knowledge of fields related to science, why do we need that?
46:11
So many of these atheists who are scientists know nothing about history. Ethics, morals, history, what does that matter?
46:26
I'm a scientist. I know about the Krebs cycle and glycolysis and electron chain transport.
46:36
Yeah, so do I, big deal. They really seem to think that as long as you have advanced knowledge in science, that means you've got it all taken care of.
46:51
And there's nothing else that can get in the way. You couldn't be educated except the church controlled all the universities.
46:59
And so it was like the National Science Foundation of the 16th century. It's not surprising they were all religious because that was the only game in town.
47:07
Except for one thing. You had to start with the belief in the regularity of nature.
47:16
You had to be able to think that I'm going to perform this experiment, and then
47:21
I'm going to perform it a second time, and I'm going to perform it a third time, and that you're going to get consistency. And where did that come from?
47:28
God's created order. It wasn't just because the Roman Catholic Church ran the universities.
47:35
It was because of a worldview. And these guys just, they never get below this surface level worldview analysis to see that they're still stealing from us.
47:52
And that's, hey, there's nothing you can do about it. They live in God's world.
47:58
They're trapped. Helped create the birth of modern science, but science outgrew it.
48:03
And that's okay. Kids outgrow their parents. Thank goodness. Well, I think maybe that might help kids outgrow their parents.
48:11
Why? I mean, getting religion forced down your throat is one of the best ways for kids to reject it as they get older.
48:18
For some kids. Kids like you and me. But I get lots of letters. You know, we made this movie called The Unbelievers, which followed
48:24
Richard Dawkins and I around the world as we talked about this stuff. And it was nice. And maybe, and I hope, and it's a well -made film.
48:31
I like the filmmakers who made it. But I found people come up to me. And I had no idea of this.
48:38
It's one of the negative aspects of religion that I never appreciated. I have people come up to me almost every day.
48:43
I write me and saying, you know what? I saw the movie and I realized I'm not a bad person for asking questions.
48:49
And I'm not alone. You know, these people from small towns in Georgia, they have no one to talk to. They think they're the only ones who's asked the question, is
48:57
God real? Is it okay to not believe in God? And they're told by everyone else, not only you'll go to hell, but you're a bad person.
49:03
You see what I said earlier? These folks are scared to death of real, vital
49:12
Christianity. They're scared to death of Francis Schaeffer.
49:21
We can't even think about that level of stuff. They can only deal with, and yeah, there are forms of Christianity.
49:30
There are unbiblical forms of Christianity that create people who are afraid to ask questions or all that kind of stuff.
49:44
But they're never dealing with where we're coming from. They don't even want to read what we have to say.
49:50
In the vast majority of instances, when I debated people on the far left, they didn't read any of my books.
49:58
They would literally feel like that would be a compromise. I had read all their stuff. Read and annotated, and so it's not surprising how the debates went as a result.
50:11
And suddenly they discover that's not true. And so I think there are a lot of people who have that force down their throats.
50:17
It's really hard when you're a kid and have these, and that's why I do think any kind of religion for kids is kind of child abuse, no matter what.
50:26
Because these concepts of a deity and the possible existence of a purpose of the universe are very deep and subtle concepts.
50:34
And to expect a three -year -old kid to ram that down a three -year -old kid's throat is unfair because the kid can't address it.
50:41
It ends up being internalized in ways. And a lot of people, I hear a lot of people who've had deep religious educations who say, you know, it's hard to outgrow that because when that's thrust into you, you know, they can't even see.
50:55
They cannot see that theirs is a religious worldview, that they have ultimate authorities, that they just won't test.
51:04
They're telling the three -year -old, you have no purpose. You're an accident. Go do whatever you want to do.
51:11
Mutilate your body. Who cares? You're an ugly bag of moisty water. There's an accident.
51:17
They might want to try to create some type of ethical, because they just realize how empty that is. They've got no place to go.
51:24
The child, it's really hard to ever overcome it. The guilt feelings that many religions introduce, the fundamental notion that, you know, you're ultimately sinful.
51:36
And no matter what you do, it's sinful. It's something a lot of people have hard times with. And that claim of sin is just so, you know,
51:42
I've debated people who, you know, who argue that homosexuality is sinful.
51:50
You know, and it's unnatural. God intended it to be otherwise. And then I pointed... Now, before he goes into this stuff, it is truly amazing to me how atheists,
52:02
I mean, atheists, when it comes to ethics and morality, are just so wildly inconsistent. Because if you understand the fundamental driving force of neo -Darwinian micromutational evolutionary theory, here's what it is.
52:16
Get as much of your genotype into the next generation as possible. And you win.
52:22
And that's the ultimate good. That's it. That's all there is to it. So homosexuality, for Darwin's theory, is absurd.
52:34
It's absolutely absurd. Now, what they've tried to do is try to come up with some way to go, well, we don't want to agree with the
52:40
Christians that that's bad. But yeah, you know, if you're homosexual, you're not going to have any kids.
52:45
And that means your genotype just goes, whoop, and you're... That's it. You're the end of the line. And not even getting into life expectancies, diseases, and all the rest of that kind of fun stuff, which has great negative impact upon the community.
53:03
Just from a neo -Darwinian perspective, it's just silly to go that direction. So they try to come up with, well, you know, maybe there's something for the community and having people that care for other people, all the rest of that kind of stuff.
53:17
It's a bunch of baloney, as we're about to see. Well, you know what? You take all mammals, 10 % in every species, almost 10 % have homosexual relationships.
53:28
Sheep have long... 10 % of sheep have long -term homosexual relationships. Are they sinful? Okay, it's...
53:35
No, they're not. But they're also not going to have offspring. And hence, you're probably going to end up in a stew somewhere fairly quickly.
53:44
And appropriately so. Again, you can have things that go wrong.
53:54
And from their perspective, let's not even talk about from a creative perspective.
54:00
From their perspective, what does that result in? Those sheep and their characteristics and any positive mutations that they have developed disappear.
54:10
They're gone. They're weeded out. Natural selection. It's gone. Um, as it should be.
54:18
As it should be. But again, from a Christian perspective, he doesn't even recognize. Sheep are not made in the image of God.
54:27
Mankind is. But for him, none of us are made in the image of God. There is no image of God to be made in the first place.
54:34
Not unnatural at all. It's a natural consequence of whatever... Now, why it's the case, it's an interesting evolutionary question.
54:41
But it's certainly not unnatural. And it seems uniform, though, if it's 10%. Yeah, it's a... Well, you know, plus or minus a little bit.
54:46
It certainly seems to be biology. There's some purpose. There's some... There's some biological purpose to it.
54:52
And so to argue that it's both unnatural and wrong is to...
54:58
Okay, okay. When a Christian says it's a natural wrong, on what basis? Not on a Darwinian basis.
55:03
I mean, you can make that argument. But why is a Christian saying that? Because scripture says so. Because God's made man in his image.
55:11
And has defined male and female. And their roles, mothers, fathers, families. And this transcends any other aspect of the natural order.
55:24
We're the only creatures that are called to that level. They can't be called to any level.
55:31
There is nothing above the natural that this man can point to. You can be called to.
55:40
So on this trip, I've been catching up on a little World War II reading. And I was...
55:49
I've mentioned I was reading a book on... It's called Race of Aces. And I think of the men.
55:59
Not just the aces. Not the ones who put their lives in line. And doing amazing thing in these little teeny tiny cramped aircraft back in that day.
56:11
But I think of the men who maintained those aircraft. That just slaved in some of the most horrific conditions.
56:20
Why they do it? Fundamentally, they believe they were defending their wives.
56:26
And their children. And their nation back home. There is no other living creature that can even conceptualize.
56:37
Why danger and disease and deprivation on the other side of the planet.
56:43
Could be something good for somebody on the other side of the planet.
56:50
Only we can understand that. And Darwinism can't even begin to explain any of that stuff.
56:57
Because it's false. Misunderstand biology. But people grow up being told it's evil because the
57:04
Bible said it. And then they don't want to give people who are homosexual the same rights as other people.
57:09
Because they say God didn't want them to have the homosexuality. So the problem is people are told these things that are ultimately wrong.
57:17
Because for whatever reason the tribe that wrote down that scripture.
57:23
Wanted to make sure that there weren't homosexual relationships in the group. The tribe that wrote down that scripture.
57:31
Well you'd be talking about Moses. If we're talking about Leviticus 18 and 20.
57:38
And as well as Genesis 18 and 19. And then you have that being lived out for 1400 years.
57:46
And then you have Jesus saying the law is good and holy and just. And dying on a cross to fulfill the penalty of breaking that law.
57:56
And so it's not some tribe someplace. It's the man who predicted his own death burial resurrection. And then pulled it off.
58:03
Very different perspective than they normally want you to understand. Well it's really baffling when you talk to people about the
58:11
Bible. And the Old Testament versus the New Testament. Finally we get to the important part. And they don't even understand where the
58:17
New Testament. Was created by Constantine and a bunch of bishops. They threw a bunch of stuff out. And by the way. Okay.
58:24
Ah. This is. Look. This was a few years ago.
58:30
Because he's talking about Mike Pence. So. We could hope. That he has.
58:39
Maybe. Some of the interviews he's done because of COVID and stuff like that. He's been exposed to.
58:46
Something better along the way. I don't know. But this is
58:51
YouTube level history. Again.
58:58
We can prove it. I have said for decades. Well okay.
59:04
I've said for at least 15 years. Let's put it that way. Anybody. Who says.
59:11
That Constantine of the Council of Nicaea. Had anything to do with the canon description. Formation of the
59:18
New Testament. Is not worth your time to talk to.
59:25
Um. In the sense that. They have not done serious study. At all.
59:33
In any way. Because. Any type of original sourced historical study.
59:41
Of Constantine. His role. Nicaea. What took place. Doesn't give you any of that.
59:50
Whatsoever. It just didn't happen. There's just nothing there. You don't get any type of silliness like that.
59:57
For hundreds of years later. Being projected back on this. But no serious historian.
01:00:04
Believes that Constantine. The bishops of Nicaea. Formed the New Testament. It's just absurd. There is.
01:00:11
No. Way. To substantiate such an allegation.
01:00:17
It's just falsehood. Completely so. That wasn't the topic at Nicaea. Now. Constantine.
01:00:27
After the Council of Nicaea. Gave money. To the church. To make copies.
01:00:33
Of the New Testament. Because Rome had been destroying them for so long. Especially between 303 and 313. But that didn't mean.
01:00:40
That he told him which books were supposed to be in the New Testament. That. That is not what
01:00:48
Nicaea was talking about. You can't find anything in the Cans and Decrees. Of the Council of Nicaea. There's nothing in the
01:00:53
Nicene Symbol about any of these things. That was not what they were focused on. They were talking about the relationship.
01:00:59
Of the father and son. Where the son is homoousius with the father. That was their focus. Now. You could argue that.
01:01:07
Well. That resulted. Then you had the Arian Resurgency. In the decades after that. And there had to be discussion.
01:01:14
About what sources the debate would be drawn from. And so down the road. You know. Finally. Athanasius 39th
01:01:21
Vestal Letter 367. You have the New Testament. As we have it laid out.
01:01:26
But. We had almost all of that. Before that period of time.
01:01:33
Like in the Muratorian Fragment. So. This whole idea. Just. It comes from someone who's never read.
01:01:41
Anything. At all. On the subject. And I'm. Like I say.
01:01:46
I'm just hoping. That maybe since then. Maybe. Having Jordan Peterson on.
01:01:52
And some of the people associated with him. Maybe. He's.
01:01:59
Gotten to do some better stuff. But like I said. Um. I love it.
01:02:05
If someone would link him to my debate with Bart Ehrman. For example. To see that Christians can stand toe to toe.
01:02:12
With our critics. And. But whether that'll happen or not. I have no idea.
01:02:18
I think it's kinder and gentler. Sure the Old Testament is one of the most. You know look at the Quran. People say the
01:02:23
Quran is violent and vicious. Read the Old Testament. You know you're supposed to stone your kids. If they disobey you. Yeah.
01:02:29
Yeah. Wow. Um. Again. Clear evidence.
01:02:35
And the reason they get away with this stuff. Is because so many Christians have never read.
01:02:42
Leviticus themselves. Or Deuteronomy. At all.
01:02:50
So no one can come along and just. Slap them up the sides of the head. And say. What are you talking about?
01:02:57
Um. I'll forget. But I will try to remember. To link. To the
01:03:04
Holiness Code series. On Sermon Audio. I think it was what 38? 38 sermons
01:03:10
I did on. The toughest texts in the Old Testament. Including. Stone your kids to disobey.
01:03:16
That's not really what it was about. Um. You'd be talking about.
01:03:23
Probably an adult child. Who goes into rebellion. Um. You're not talking about.
01:03:30
A six year old. Or anything like that. In any way shape or form. But he doesn't care about that.
01:03:36
He doesn't care what the actual context is. This is. This is all how to throw out stuff out there. And again. If there isn't anybody to push back.
01:03:43
Then they figure. Yeah we must be right about that. Because no one ever responds to our. Our criticisms.
01:03:49
And and the reason. To kill people that wear two different kinds of cloth. Exactly. And the reason that. Nowadays. Sort of the old.
01:03:55
Abrahamic religions of Judaism and Christianity. May seem a little less violent. Than Islam for some people.
01:04:01
Is because you know. People take the. Quran. Literally. That's part of sort of fundamentalism.
01:04:08
Very few. Very few people. Take the Bible as literally. As namely.
01:04:13
Hey we're gonna stone kids. In the 12th century they may have. But now we've outgrown it.
01:04:19
And Islam is 600 years younger. Again this man doesn't know anything about Islam.
01:04:24
Doesn't know anything about the history of Christianity. Doesn't know anything about biblical interpretation. It's. Astonishing how bad.
01:04:31
The leading atheists are. They well. Again why. Why should an atheist care. That atheism.
01:04:37
Does not provide a moral foundation. For even being truthful in what you say about others. But. For Christians.
01:04:47
You need to understand. This is why we need to know these things. This is why we need. To. Understand God's law.
01:04:56
And understand what it. Meant at that time. How it was functioning at that time. This isn't a matter of.
01:05:04
Of. Picking and choosing as they're about to say. There is of course the issue.
01:05:10
In Islam. Of. The interpretation of the Quran. Because the
01:05:16
Quran is such a small book. And it. Assumes you have the Old and New Testament.
01:05:22
It assumes you have that lens. But it is very difficult. To interpret the
01:05:28
Quran. And that's why you have to use the Hadith. And I'm pretty sure this man's never read the
01:05:33
Hadith. Which I have. And that's where the.
01:05:39
That's where it comes from. Now. If you go listen to my presentation Islam A to Z. I talked about. One of the major differences between Islam and Christianity.
01:05:48
We had Acts 15. They never did. And that's why you have. So much of what's going on today.
01:05:54
Take a look at that. We're almost done with this. We've gone way over time. I apologize. But let's finish it up. And so it's just.
01:06:01
The Old Testament is just as violent as the Quran. But no one takes it seriously. The Old Testament records.
01:06:09
Man's inhumanity to man. That's completely different than saying. It teaches you to engage in violence.
01:06:17
The only example they gave. Was a horrifically bad one. That doesn't really make any sense.
01:06:24
So. This is this is. I talk to Christians who are ignorant.
01:06:29
The Old Testament. This all has worked for them. So I'm gonna throw it out at you too. What are you talking about?
01:06:36
Are you talking about Psalm 136? Are you talking about. Passages.
01:06:42
Are you talking about the imprecatory Psalms? Or are you talking about Psalms that say. Yahweh's loving kindness.
01:06:49
Is never ending. But. There's more references to Yahweh's Chesed.
01:06:56
His loving kindness. His covenant faithfulness. His grace. In the Old Testament. Than in the New. So what specifically are you talking about?
01:07:03
I don't think they know. They've just gotten away with this so long. That they just. Keep throwing it out there.
01:07:09
Most people who call themselves religious. They pick and choose. The things they like from the Bible. Or the New Testament.
01:07:14
Or the Old Testament. They pick and choose the nice. Kindler. Gentler things. You know. Richard Dawkins. Foundation in England.
01:07:21
Did an interesting survey. So they. The British government does a census. And they ask people's religions.
01:07:28
As part of it. And in the last census. Okay. I'm not going to press on with that.
01:07:35
There's only like. One minute left. Or something like that. And it's not really relevant. The point was.
01:07:41
Joe Rogan talking about. Constantine. Nicaea. These are standard.
01:07:47
New Testament mythologies. These are standard. Internet mythologies.
01:07:53
Not New Testament mythologies. And we have to be prepared to deal with them.
01:07:58
Every one of us. Not just me. I say. If you are going to be engaging our culture.
01:08:06
Homeschooling parents. Your kids need to know. You need to know. This should not be something.
01:08:11
We're having to look up. Because it's just so prevalent. If these are the prevalent.
01:08:18
Excuses that people are using. To avoid. Dealing with what scripture says.
01:08:23
That we need to. Be prepared to respond to them. And we can't. It's not difficult to do that.
01:08:30
At all. So. Anyway. Thank you. For. Enduring my.
01:08:39
Oopses. And my cough. I picked this up.
01:08:45
Last weekend in. Prior. And so far it hasn't been too bad. I'm still writing.
01:08:51
Um. But. It's just a scratchy type thing. And it's. It's. Annoying.
01:08:59
But. We'll soldier on through it. So. Uh. Next program.
01:09:05
Should be back in. Our regular studios. And I'll be honest with you. I'm gonna miss having.
01:09:13
Having. The amount of control that I have. And my. My light.
01:09:22
You know I. It's not that big a light. I could. Could take it out.
01:09:29
Probably look really cool. Know all the other studios. I know. I know Rich is going.
01:09:35
No no no not doing it. No I'll put up with it. When you're in there.
01:09:42
But I ain't putting up with it anyplace else. I I can just. I can just see that right now. Anyway.
01:09:49
All righty. Thanks for watching the program today. We'll see you Lord willing. Next week.