Apologetics - with special guest Scott Weckerly

Again. This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport. Good evening. How are you, Pastor Justin?

Doing great again. Yeah, for the second time.

Well, we forgot to hit the start button. So, hello, everybody. This is Pastor Justin Pierce, Anthony, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, Dentist Dr. Anthony Silvestro. Not a real doctor. Not a real doctor. Pretend one.

He plays one on TV, and sometimes when you're getting political, they play one. Scott, how do you pronounce your last name? I don't want to wreck it. Weckerle. Weckerle. See, I almost said Wickerle, so I didn't want to mess it up.

So, we've been having a blast. I'll tell you what, this has been one crazy week for me. We actually went to Andrew Rappaport's church on Sunday and got to be a part of his, how do you call it? He became an official elder at the church.

That was incredible. I'm telling you, the pastor, the co-pastor with Andrew there, the man can preach. I'll tell you what, I just sat and listened to probably, let's see, 9 to 1230. I listened to three and a half hours of just wonderful, wonderful preaching.

And so, those guys are in store for some great truth. But we had a blast with that. We got to go to Hershey Park in Hershey, Pennsylvania. And I don't know about you guys, but I can't stand chocolate.

So, I got tortured with chocolate. I'm not a chocolate person at all. I'm sweet enough as it is. And then we went to Amish country. And man, I'll tell you, that was a blast. So, now we're back.

Yeah. So, I saw our first question already from Ethan. Yeah. Well, first was a comment. He got tired of us talking about Mike Reed. Ethan, I'm tired of it too. I cannot stand talking about it. I really wish that he and his elders would repent and resign and allow the people that are attending his cult, be able to leave and go find a real church to go to and start getting healed from all the abuse that they've taken.

So, yeah, I hope that we can stop talking about this forever at some point here real soon. And then you also asked the question, what happened last week, which I was actually going to get into. So, I know Justin, you had a tragedy last week.

And if you wish to share, I'll let you do that here in a few moments. But Andrew and I were with Scott here out in Boise, Idaho last week. And we were there for a long weekend. And so, what's going on is, for those of you who don't know, not only do I speak for Striving Fraternity Ministries with Andrew, I also speak for Creation Training Initiative, CTI, with Mike Riddle.

He's a fantastic creation speaker, used to speak for Ancestors in Genesis for years, and has gone off on his own now, because he's got a heart for teaching and for training people to teach. One of the things that's plaguing Christianity today, plaguing our churches is we don't have qualified teachers anywhere.

We don't have people who understand basic doctrine, and they're standing up in front of our kids, barely looking at the lesson ahead of time and trying to teach kids stuff that they really have no business teaching, honestly.

And so, Mike has set out to change Christian education. He wants to change it in Christian schools, in churches, everywhere you possibly can. And the only way we can do that is to get teachers trained.

So, without getting into a whole lot of Mike's background, Mike was the head trainer for Microsoft worldwide back when they were growing exponentially in the 90s, late 80s, early 90s, I believe is when he was there, directly reporting to Bill Gates.

He developed a training program to train their engineers worldwide, and constantly was the top trainer within Microsoft. He took those principles and brought them to Christianity, and to teach people how to actually teach properly.

So, Mike brought me on about almost two years ago now into the ministry to train me up into learning how to train others to teach. And what this past weekend was we, he flew in around a dozen people from around the country, of which Scott was one, Andrew was another.

So, let me make sure you guys hear this right. Andrew was in the audience learning. This guy was up front teaching them. I saw a picture of you almost snoring back there, Anthony. Actually, what it was, is I was paying attention while Mike was giving his teaching on the first day, and Andrew wasn't paying attention, and he was instead trying to snap.

Pictures of myself and everybody else. Yeah. Okay. So, I want to change the subject, but in a second, we're going to do some advertisement stuff, but in just a second. But I want you to think about this.

I saw a whole bunch of controversy going on Facebook. It got really serious. I mean, it got to the point where I thought it was going to come to blows over this thing. What is the deal with you feeding, getting fed by Matt Slick?

What is going on with this? I mean, it was terrifying. I thought it was going to come to, there's going to be like a ninja battle thing going on and all that. I'm joking, by the way. For the audio portion, this is all facetious.

If you guys don't know, there's been an ongoing war with Matt Slick and Andrew Rappaport for it seems like years now that Matt Slick has been trying to outdo him, Andrew, by getting dinner for him. And then next thing you know, I see this thing, oh, he got him, he got him.

And I.

Thought, oh no, this is not going to go good. Yeah. Andrew still doesn't want to admit to it. So, what happened was Matt actually, you know, Matt Slick is in the Boise area and he had a CARM meeting on Monday after this following weekend.

So, two of his board members were staying with him all weekend. And we invited them to come to the course as well to see the type of teaching we do. And, you know, Matt Slick is a guy who he is, he's not an evolutionist, but he's never studied out age of the earth stuff.

So, it gave us an opportunity to talk to him a little bit more about age of the earth. But anyways, he was there at the conference. I hung out with him most of the day, Saturday and Saturday evening after the conference was over.

Had a great time talking. I will say Matt Slick is a young earth creationist. He does believe in young earth. So, I'm glad to see that. He's a biblical creationist is what you're saying. So, he's a biblical creationist, exactly.

He's not a heretic. So, we're going to get some articles up on his website here real soon that I'll probably coauthor with him or something so that his position is clearly delineated on there. But so, what you're bringing up is dinner.

Several of us went out to dinner. We went to Mongolian Barbecue Place. And I viewed this as an official striving for eternity event on Saturday evening. I was there representing Striving for Eternity.

So, I was going to pay for Matt Slick's dinner as part of Striving for Eternity. Well, Matt beat me to the punch. And Matt ended up paying. And so, in paying for my dinner, it really is imputed onto Andrew that he actually paid for Andrew for dinner.

So, that's what happened. Yeah, because it was official Striving for Eternity. Matt beat me. Ended up being paid for by Carm instead. So, yeah, that counts. And I would say that if we take the votes on Facebook, most of the people would agree with me and Matt.

Yeah. So, that's what happened there. Yeah. But in all seriousness, before we get to Scott here, one of the things we've talked about earlier, I know you're good friends with Sean Wah. Oh, yeah. And we are as well.

Love Sean. Great brother. Solid guy theologically. Also, I think has the right view in terms of the understanding of politically what we're supposed to be doing this November. And so, we did a show with him back in, I want to say, February or March with Sean.

I'm going to plan on having him again sometime maybe in October before the election. But I also received another phone call. Somebody else who is very much on the side of where we would sit is Pastor Chuck O 'Neill.

And so, you know, Pastor Chuck gave me a phone call, I don't know, three or four days ago now because he saw comments I made on a Facebook thread. Like four years ago, there is some Christians who say, you know, I can't vote for, I can't vote for obviously Biden, right?

I get that. They also say I can't vote against my conscious and vote for Trump. They don't like the lesser of two evils argument. I think it's the correct argument. I'm not going to talk about that today necessarily.

We're going to do that on some future shows coming up here soon. But having said all that, he was interested about a comment I made because like four years ago, there were people that were propping up a guy named Tom Hoefling for president.

And they say he's an ardent anti-abortionist, Christian, all kinds of things. But the thing that disturbed me four years ago when I was making the arguments for Trump, not really because I believe he's a Christian, I don't, but because I think he protects the Christian worldview better than the other main candidate at the time, Hillary Clinton.

I feel the exact same way today, that he is the better of the two options to protect the Christian worldview. And he's electable. So that's why I think we as Christians need to vote for Trump. Having said that, Tom Hoefling was around, people said you need to vote for him.

He seems to be a standup guy. So the researcher in me decided to research Tom Hoefling. Nowhere on his page do you see where he goes to church. Nowhere on his page do you see what his beliefs are as a Christian, nothing.

Like people could research me and it would take them all about 30 seconds to know where I go to church, who my pastor's name is, who my closest friends are. I mean, this is not, there's nothing hidden about this.

People know my wife's not a heretic. They know what she believes. I mean, people know where we stand. Well, what's interesting about Tom is that we don't know where he stands. There's nothing that his page has labeled.

So then I went and researched who his wife was, Sienna Hoefling. And boy, did I find out some interesting stuff. She's a Mormon. And when I told a few other people about this four years ago, and people started sending messages to Tom Hoefling, Tom refused to answer the questions, at least at the time.

He refused to answer the questions. And then his wife's Facebook account got deleted, gone. And it remained deleted for several years. It wasn't until I saw somebody put something on Tom Hoefling back up maybe a month ago about running for president again, that I decided to research his page.

Nothing has changed here. I researched Sienna's page. It looks like her Facebook was started back up again in May, 2019. There's nothing prior to that. And she does nothing but pro-life, which is good, and Trump bashing, which is not Christian-like whatsoever.

And so it's been interesting. And as people have been increasingly putting stuff pro-Tom Hoefling up, there's other guys who've been coming out saying the same things I have. One of them is Pastor Chuck O 'Neill.

He saw my comment that I wrote in this one thread that his wife's a Mormon. He hasn't answered to that. And Chuck ended up calling me, and he put out a letter today, this afternoon. So you saw that. I forwarded on a number of pages already.

I think people need to read it. And if you're going to vote for Tom Hoefling, he needs to answer some questions. He says he's going to. One of our friends and brothers in the Lord, Mason Goodnight, who I respect greatly, he's a Hoefling fan.

He contacted Tom Hoefling himself and spoke to him, and Tom says he's going to come out and answer all the questions that Chuck O 'Neill put into his letter, which addresses the same concerns I brought up, as well as many others.

So I hope that that's actually going to be the case, and then we'll see what happens from there.

It's a small world, I'll tell you that. It certainly is. Yeah, isn't it? Well, you don't know how small, because my wife's family lives about 10 minutes, 10 miles or so away from the Hoeflings. He lives in Louisville, Iowa.

And I've known Tom Hoefling for quite a long time, through Facebook and through his first time he started going out, trying to run for president. And let's just say the reputation, it could use some help in his community, regardless of what everybody wants to talk about, about what, oh, I heard him say this, I heard him say that.

You know, there's, it's a lot to be said for the people that actually know him. And I don't know that a lot of great information about him. I just know that the reputation as far as when I started looking into him, when he first started running, because I lived up in the area, was not the best.

You know, it was a little, you know, of course, I mean, Trump's isn't the best either. But, you know, I guess my concern, like yours is, if you're trying to look at the lesser of two evils argument, and you're trying to, you know, say, oh, well, we have to have a perfect candidate.

You're not looking at a biblical perspective when it comes to the government issue. And we can talk about that all you want. I mean, brother, I don't know that you came on to talk about that one subject.

So I don't want to, I don't want to monopolize your time on that.

Yeah, no. And so I wanted to bring it up to the listeners to show that we do have more to talk about than just Pastor Mike Reed, cult leader Mike Reed, but that we are going to address this topic at some point in the near future on a couple of different shows.

So look forward to that. I think those will be some really good shows. Oh, I'm sorry. That's what I was just about to say.

Just before we jump in and get started, I do want to introduce everybody. This is Striving for Eternity, and we're here with Striving for Eternity. If you want to join in and ask questions, brothers, I assume that we're okay for opening up questions for anybody wants to ask questions.

So if you want to ask questions, you can go to apologeticslive .com and just click the join in. And you'll have to go through a little rigmarole to jump in, and we might be able to put you online here and have a discussion with you if you want to do that.

Let's see. We've got bills to pay with the stuff that's going on with Striving for Eternity. So just the outreach ministries and all the work that Striving for Eternity does, I want to invite you if you haven't, and if you've kept up on your biblical obligations to God first and the body of Christ as well, that if you can donate towards Striving for Eternity, we would love to see this ministry supported as much as possible, as much as you feel that God would lead you to do that.

And if you do it right, we'll give you a prayer cloth that's got a good blessing on it. I'm joking. Oh, I had to put that in there.

Double it, and I'll throw some holy water in it.

Oh man, yes, some holy water. That'll work. That'll work. Fresh from the Catholic church.

That's good stuff. That's good stuff. Thanks, Justin. So without further ado, I want to introduce a guest and a good friend of mine who I really enjoy talking to a lot and look forward to working with a lot more in the future.

And so anybody who's read my book, On the Origin of Kinds, if you've gone to page five, I think it is, and you see that there's five people listed in there who I had read the book ahead of time, not just for editing purposes, grammar-wise, but for the purpose of content, making sure things were buttoned up properly, that kind of stuff.

People I trusted for that. My guest is actually one of them. You'll see his name listed in the book, beginning of the book, as one of the primary reviewers early on. It's my only claim to fame. I've got more than that.

And so where Scott and I met was, it's been seven or eight years ago now. It would have been 2014. 2014. So yeah, okay. So six and a half years then, six and a half years ago. We met when Mike Riddle started his five-day creation training course that he does in the summertime.

Fantastic training course. It's one where you're not only going to learn about creation and precept apologetics at a lay level and some other current topics in Christianity that we have known as apologists, you also will have to get up and give like four different presentations to which you're graded in giving.

It's fantastic in terms of a course. And so that's where I actually met Scott was we were the attendees of that first ever five-day course way back in the day. And it was a wonderful time of learning.

You know, we struck up a friendship. We had a lot in common and still do. So I've always said when people ask me who the best apologists are, I get asked this a lot when I go speak in churches and people expect me to say some of the big names that are out there, you know, that I would take the such and such and so and so in my corner to be the top apologist.

And I would say, you know what? That's not true. You know who I would take? I would take the nobodies. I would take people that know how to do this on a street level any day of the week. And that's who Scott is, right?

One of those guys that can just do it at street level understands precept properly. And yeah, so I'm very happy and honored to have Scott here. So I don't want to tell the audience a little bit about yourself here.

Well, I'm good friends with Anthony and I'm honored to be here. Basically, I accepted Christ when I was in about 10 years old. And from the time I accepted Christ, I was kind of like the soldier in Scripture that said, Lord, I believe help my unbelief because I always had some questions.

And so when I got into junior high, I had a youth pastor basically that introduced me to the works of Josh McDowell and C .S. Lewis. And so I just devoured that material because it was the kind of thing I was asking questions about.

Can I trust the Bible? You know, does this make sense or am I just jumping off a bridge with a blind faith? And so I studied those materials starting in junior high and well into high school. And when I got into college, I was introduced to the Institute for Creation Research.

Our church at college had one of their speakers come. And I had no idea that there were PhD scientists out there doing research of thinking God's thoughts after him of trying to understand how God was making the world operate.

And so I began to devour those materials.

And so if you don't mind me cutting you off, Scott, we're going to get into some of this apologetic stuff. What I really want you to talk about right now is you're a drummer, a professional drummer for a pretty famous guy, especially for people that are into the country music scene.

Yeah, so I've played drums ever since I was a little kid. And I went through the public school program of music, playing in a band, marching band, jazz band, all those things, and went to college and studied jazz as a drummer.

I went to North Texas State, which is one of the top jazz schools in the country. And I actually went there, actually got a jazz performance degree and moved to Nashville and worked as a full time musician here for over 26 years.

And one of my main, I've had two main accounts while I've been here in Nashville. One of them has been with a big band jazz band, which did a lot of convention work and concerts and things and played four presidential inaugural balls in a row.

Hold on a second. You played in four presidential inaugural balls? Yeah, yeah.

Played for Bush Senior, both Clinton inaugurations and W in 2000. That is fascinating. I didn't even know that about you. That's fascinating. Yeah, of course. So like in Washington, D .C. In Washington, D .C., downtown.

When W was elected, I went around looking for souvenirs on the streets from the street vendors. The last thing I got, I got one of the last T-shirts that, you know, it was Gore Lieberman and the shirt said, sore loser man.

I've got that T-shirt hanging up downstairs. Oh, that's great. Yeah. But yeah, so it was an honor to do those kinds of things. But the other main account after I moved to Nashville was I ended up playing with a guy named Ray Stevens, which he's a comedy guy.

Older folks would recognize him immediately, probably. Younger folks. Younger. Thanks a lot.

So you recognize him, Justin? Yeah, just a little bit. I mean, I listen to Ray Stevens like constantly. Yeah. So meet his drummer.

There you go. It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you. Thank you. So I've played with Ray. I've done all of Ray's Nashville-based shows, and I say it that way because he spent a couple of, he did two trips out to Branson, Missouri, where he did a sit down and I didn't play for him then because I didn't need to move to Branson, you know.

But he always came back to Nashville, and I've done all his Nashville-based shows for over 30 years because I started when I was two, you know. So that's a joke, by the way, Justin.

Well, the thing is, I was about two when I started listening.

So anyway, and I still play, I still perform for Ray now. He has built his own showroom in Nashville. It's called the Cabaret, spelled R-A-Y, because it's Ray Stevens Cabaret. And until COVID hit, we were doing over 100 shows a year on the weekends right here in Nashville, which is just the ideal thing for a musician.

I haven't had to reset my drums for over two years now, you know. Wow. Yeah. So that's been a lot of fun. And he's been very kind to me, and he's just been wonderful to work with. So. Yeah.

That's great. So Sumerian is asking, what is the major topic tonight? Well, the major topic is we're talking apologetics with our guest, Scott Weckerle, tonight. And if anybody has any questions specifically about apologetics, please type them in or come right into the StreamYard link, and you can come on and ask live at that point.

So as I tell people about Scott and drumming for Ray Stevens, almost everybody has the same response as what I just read here a moment ago. Is that the squirrel guy who sings about the squirrels?

Mississippi Squirrel Revival, yes. We play that song every night. Every show I've done with Ray, we always finish with, it's me again, Margaret, Mississippi Squirrel. Everything is beautiful. And The Streak is the closer.

So I kind of know those by heart. Yeah.

Yeah. That's great. So let's jump into apologetics. Of course, unless somebody has questions about Ray Stevens, please feel free to type in. But hey, Brad, good to see you tonight, bro. So, you know, you had it very similar to me, Scott, is that when I first got saved, quickly, somebody shoved more than a carpenter by Josh McDowell in one hand.

I had C .S. Lewis, who now I know to be a heretic, but had a lot of good, interesting things to say. But C .S. Lewis's Mere Christianity shoved in my other hand. And I read both of those books, really enjoyed them.

But and obviously, you enjoyed a lot of that stuff, too. Oh, yeah. Back in the day. But, you know, we've both kind of gone through a change around six or seven years ago in terms of apologetics methods.

Yeah, mine was actually about 10 years ago. A little earlier. Yeah. It, you know, of course, through the years I had taught Bible studies and, you know, life groups and Sunday school classes and things and, you know, had lots of discussions with non-believers and was always kind of frustrated with the discussions because it just didn't seem to be getting anywhere.

And so in 2010... The Mississippi Scroll Revival, he pulled it up. Thank you. I absolutely had to.

Is that actually going to play? I'm going to actually have to pull it back off real quick and then... Okay.

And in 2010, I heard Dr. Jason Lyle present a live presentation he did, which was kind of a summary of his book called The Ultimate Proof of Creation. And that was my introduction to presuppositional apologetics.

And it really kind of turned my world upside down because, you know, I had been studying all of the evidential apologetics for most of my life. You know, it was my passion on the side. And when I was introduced to presuppositional apologetics, understanding world views on how, you know, we all have the same evidence and we look at it differently because of our world view.

That's how we come to different conclusions. And when I understood the presuppositions that go into a world view and how to use that in a biblical manner when we're sharing the gospel, it was like the light bulb came on.

And it put all the evidential apologetics in its proper place. And it finally all made sense.

So we're going to dive into this one a little bit. We did have Cindy ask us this question. Can you explain what that means, apologetics? Because there's so many names. So, you know, so Scott, how would you define apologetics?

Well, apologetics, you know, it comes from the Greek word in the New Testament, apologia, which means to make a reasoned defense. And so it's the verse, 2nd Peter, right? 3 .15, 1st Peter 3 .15, where it says sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense for the hope that is in you to anybody that asks of you, you know, with gentleness and respect.

And so apologetics is the term that we've coined off of the Greek word apologia. We're not making an apology for anything. We don't have to apologize for anything unless you're rude to somebody, you know, but that's why we do it with gentleness and respect.

That's right. So that would be the term apologetics. It's making a reasoned defense. It's kind of like, you know, the idea of a lawyer in a courtroom. He's going to defend his client and he's going to give solid reasoning behind his defense.

So that's apologetics. Yeah, good. Yeah, good summary of it. And so in this apologetics, you know, you and I both spent time, you know, obviously not even knowing one another, but spent time as we make our apologetic, make our defense of the faith.

Yes, John, you should show up with some chickens. That always makes the show better. At KT and Jesus, is Andrew actually watching this? He comes in and out as we have this on. He's still very busy in terms of his unpacking.

His move was just made complete a little over a week ago now and is moved to Pennsylvania. So he's moved and he's unpacking. He's trying to get up his computer set up for his work. Now he has his personal computer up already, but the work computers are a lot more intense in doing.

So he's been working on that, which is why you get two good looking guys and Justin and myself and Scott as well to hold down the show for Andrew.

You got two incredibly tan guys over here and a guy that looks like a white sheet of paper. I actually just need to rub in some dirt or something. I'm outside all the time and I never get as dark as you.

This is my darkest in a while. I've been outside a lot. I think COVID has gotten me outside a lot. You know, everybody still buying into this ridiculous coronavirus stuff.

I've got to play this. So we have to give a commentary so that we don't get in trouble by YouTube. This is the Mississippi Squirrel Revival. And for those that don't know it, squirrels were not harmed in the making of this video.

I want to hit this and let it play for a second, just so everybody gets a taste for it.

This is how you do apologetics, guys. When I was a kid, I'd take a trip every summer down to Mississippi to visit my granny and her auntie. I'd run barefoot all day long, climbing trees, free as a song.

One day, I happened to catch myself a squirrel. Well, I stuffed him down in an old shoebox, punched a couple holes in the top. When Sunday came, I snuck him in the church. I sat way back in the very last pew, showing him to my good buddy Hugh.

That squirrel got loose, went totally berserk. What happened next is hard to tell. Some thought it was heaven, others thought it was hell. But the fact that something was among us was plain to see. Oh, man.

The squirrel sang, I surrender all. The squirrel ran up hard, knew it was coveralls. There he is!

He said, something got a hold of me! Yeah! That day the squirrel went berserk. In the fierce uprights of church. In that sleepy little town of Pascagoula. It was a fight for survival. That broke out in revival.

They would jump in the pews and shout hallelujah.

Well, a heart went out dancing and screaming. Some thought he had religion, others thought he had a demon heart. Thought he had a weedy delusion through the moons. He fell to his knees to plead and beg, and that squirrel ran out of him.

Pricked his leg unobserved to the other side of the room. All the way down to the amen pew. Wish that sister birth a better view. I always wanted to marry her.

Oh, wow.

Oh, we gotta stop. Yeah, we might get past the copyright.

Yeah, don't go past the copyright in those two minutes.

Oh, man. We have to critique the video, don't we? So that we're still legal.

Well, we did. We just said that the squirrel was... The antichrist.

And actually the guy whose coveralls the squirrel ran up, his name is Buddy Kalb. And he's actually the guy who wrote the song for Ray. Oh, really? Yeah, that's Buddy Kalb. He's a songwriter, wrote that hit for Ray.

And Buddy is a dear Christian brother. Loves the Lord.

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. It looks like Sean ended up coming out. He says his personal favorite is the Shriners Convention. I don't know that one.

Yeah, that one's kind of wild too. Boy, where have you been? Yeah, that was kind of wild too. Well, man, I'm really glad to meet you. I've listened to a lot of Ray Stevens' music. So, I mean, this is a whole different topic, I know.

Just to get to know somebody of your stature and celebrity status.

Well, see, I'm not a celebrity. I sit behind the guy who's a celebrity. That's right.

Somebody has to ask for the drummer's signature, right? Oh, from time to time. Yeah. That's good. I've got a question.

I've got a question. And dealing with apologetics. You know, what is the route that you take when you're talking to a nominal unbeliever? You know, you're talking about somebody that, you know, not your Dawkins or your Hawkins or anybody else like that with a celebrity name that's committed to their atheism, to their agnosticism.

Give me a route that you take when you're, let's say you're just talking to somebody that said, do you believe in God? They say, well, maybe there's a higher authority, but I don't think so. And I don't know that I've ever seen any evidence for God, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah. So give me a kind of a route that you might take if you're talking to someone.

I'm not sure with the scenario there.

So if somebody comes up to you and says, you know, I don't believe God exists. Yeah.

Because, I mean, you're going to hear that. And I guess the reason I would come from that question is, you know, that's the life we live in. That's the America we live in. That's the world we live in where they've without any real insight into study, any real research in the study.

Of course, I mean, I don't know if you are, but kind of as a Calvinist, I kind of expect that they're not going to believe, you know, as a biblical Christian, I expect that they're not going to believe because of a hard heart, because of that heart, because they're rebelling against God from the get go.

I mean, I believe that comes down from Adam onward. But even regardless of that, we have the, you know, the apologetic argument, you know, first Peter 3, 15, to give a reason for the hope. And so when I, when somebody comes to me and they ask, you know, so what's your evidence for the existence of God?

And they're asking an argument. They're asking for a reason for the hope. And they say, well, I don't believe in God. Can you show me some evidence or can you give me a reason why I should accept this hope that you're talking about?

So maybe you could kind of elaborate on something along those lines.

Yeah, well, thinking presuppositionally, you know, we know from Romans 1 that everybody knows God, you know, Romans 1 tells us that He has made Himself known to everyone. And so when they say they don't believe in God, they're actually suppressing the truth of what they do know.

And we also know from Romans 2 that God has written, you know, His law into their conscience. So the moral law. And so one way to look at that, you know, they say, well, I don't believe in God. And so one way to go at that is to just ask them...

I just drew a blank. That's it. Well, I usually like to ask them about the building behind them or anything, right? And I think that's what's fascinating about presupposition. One of the things that you really turned me on to was the Stein-Bonson debate or Bonson-Stein debate back in the day, because this is a guy that clearly was trying...

In a number of ways, Stein was trying to establish good and evil, right, within the debate. And Bonson took him to task for that. And so why did he do that?

Why did he take him to task? Well, he took him to task because, you know, he was making lots of knowledge claims that his worldview couldn't back up. You know, the fact, you know, and just like Jason Lyle's ultimate proof of creation, the ultimate proof of creation of God's existence is that if God did not exist, we couldn't know anything.