Best Arguments for Atheism | Apologetics Live 0043

Striving for Eternity Videos

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:16

This is Apologetics Live with Matt Slick and Andrew Rappaport, part of the

00:25

Christian Podcast Community. All right, welcome.

00:45

We are live, Apologetics Live with you tonight, hopefully answering your questions and challenges and I'm solo right now, which is actually really concerning because the fellow who was supposed to come in and give his best arguments for atheism isn't here yet.

01:03

That is Jeff, so we're going to have to wait until he gets in to hear what his best arguments for atheism were.

01:13

But where's Matt Slick? So I got to give some updates, do some house cleaning to get us started. Matt is, for folks who know,

01:21

Matt was planning on moving some time ago and then he discovered that had he moved, where once he moves, his insurance starts completely over with a deductible and that means that he, with his wife's condition, gets to start all over.

01:38

Not a good thing. And therefore, he decided to hold off on the move until, well, until it starts getting cold in Idaho.

01:46

And so he's right now got a lot going on. They're doing a lot with CARM, they're redoing a bunch of stuff.

01:54

And so right now, he basically said he's not going to have time for a while to be doing anything beyond what he's got going on with CARM and with moving.

02:05

He's hoping to move, I think it's October. So be praying for the Slicks as they look to move.

02:14

And I will say, if there's anyone watching here on YouTube, that just a couple of things to note.

02:20

One, go to apologeticslive .com to find out how to join, to get the links to join here.

02:28

And that would be good. If you have any questions. Also, let me give you a new

02:34

YouTube channel for Striving for Eternity. If you go to bit .ly, that's b -i -t -l -y .com

02:42

slash Y -T -S -F -E, that stands for YouTube Striving for Eternity.

02:47

If you could go there and subscribe, we're setting up a new channel. And just with everything going on with CARM, they're redoing the website and whatnot.

02:56

And because of that, they're going to have some time where they're going to be changing websites and whatnot.

03:02

So we're going to move Apologetics Live. We wanted to eventually have it have its own home, and that hasn't quite happened yet, but I think eventually it will.

03:12

So we're going to probably move this over to the Striving for Eternity page. We set up this new account for Striving for Eternity because we always had issues with the old one, the way it was set up.

03:22

It was set up years ago. And so if you could go to bit .ly, b -i -t -l -y .com

03:28

slash Y -T -S -F -E, stands for YouTube Striving for Eternity.

03:35

Go there and subscribe to the new channel. That's where we're going to end up putting the

03:41

Apologetics Live in the future, at least for a little while. So with that, some housekeeping stuff out of the way.

03:50

I don't know where Mr. Jeff is. I guess I'd say if anyone could go to the

03:56

CARM page and make sure you can get in, let me know. Oh, I am noticing that it's not actually a link, so that would make it better.

04:06

Let me fix that right now for any of you who are trying to get in instead of copying and pasting it.

04:12

Sorry about that. We had some problems with this page, and that's why it looks a little different there.

04:19

So folks are saying Matt is juggling too much. Yes, and that is why we're trying to solve that.

04:28

And so I wonder if Jeff couldn't get in because it was a copy -paste issue, but that is now a link there, folks.

04:35

If you go to ApologeticsLive .com and go to the link there to join. So basically, let's talk some things until Jeff or anyone else comes in and starts to start asking some questions.

04:53

The title of this show was Best Arguments for Atheism. And that was a question that I asked last episode of Jeff, and if you haven't heard that, you can always get

05:07

Apologetics Live on podcast. Just search in any podcast catcher, any app for podcast, just search for Apologetics Live and you can go to last week's.

05:18

And that was on with Vocab Malone on Black Hebrew Israelites. And Jeff was in it early on and we started a discussion, but because we had

05:26

Vocab in, we couldn't finish that. So he had said he'd come in this week. I'm hoping that he does.

05:35

So that would be good. So what are some of the best arguments I've heard?

05:40

I'll give what I've heard as the arguments and I'll give some of what I think he started saying because he started to talk about things like contradictions in the

05:52

Bible, things like that. That usually is an argument that many people who have grown up in a

06:00

Christian home that would usually they make those sort of arguments that there's contradictions in the

06:07

Bible. And typically what you end up finding is most of those people, when you actually dig into the arguments they're making, you end up discovering that they're actually not contradictions.

06:22

And this is the thing we have to be aware of. When you're making an argument against another person's position, what you want to be able to do is be honest with their position.

06:35

I know, I know it's a crazy idea being honest with someone else's view. Well, the reality is if you can't be honest about someone's view, if your position is one where you feel that you have to be dishonest about their view, then what you end up seeing in that is the fact that you're dealing with someone who really is losing an argument.

07:04

All right. And so if you're going to challenge my view, that's fine. Just don't misrepresent it.

07:10

Right. I would try to do the same with yours. That's how we should do things. And that's the issue that we end up seeing is what we want to be able to do is challenge people rightly interpreting what they're saying.

07:24

OK, this is a dilemma that you'll see very often is people don't want to do that. They want to misrepresent. I was just looking up.

07:32

I was just trying to look up that on the new YouTube channel, we already got comments from from professing atheists already challenging.

07:39

And it's an interesting thing that you end up seeing when you have people that are challenging in that way.

07:46

When you're going to misrepresent a view. Let me give you one that I just got on Twitter on my latest rap report daily podcast that we did.

07:54

We dropped an episode. I think it was this morning or yesterday. I forget which. And it was dealing with a topic that I guess what got everyone upset or got them motivated was the podcast itself.

08:10

The episode itself is if suicide is wrong. Why did Jesus do it? And the argument

08:15

I'm making and I'll just actually I'll just click on it and read what what

08:21

I had said. It's less than two minutes. It's a daily podcast. But if suicide is wrong, why did

08:26

Jesus do it? If suicide is is wrong, right? People argue make the argument that that why did why did

08:33

God commit cosmic suicide? This is an argument that we have from some new atheists that they make this claim that Jesus was taking his own life on the cross as a suicide attempt.

08:44

That might be the case if Jesus was created purely in the image of God, not actually

08:50

God. What you end up seeing here is a category error that what suicide actually is and why it's wrong.

09:00

The reason that suicide is wrong is that it is taking of a life, even your own because you're made in the image of God.

09:08

God would say that we do not murder. We don't that includes taking of our own life.

09:15

That's an act of murder. However, what Jesus did on the cross was not an act of murder.

09:21

He gave his life. Remember, he was on the cross given enough time.

09:26

He would have died anyway from natural circumstances. How he did not take his own life or sorry.

09:34

He could not take his own life. If he was purely a man because he was hanging on the cross, his hands extended out.

09:43

His feet are are nailed in. There's no way he could actually do anything to take his own life.

09:49

Unless, of course, and here's the irony. He actually is who he says he was God Almighty.

09:55

So the argument that he took his own life, that he committed suicide when he was nailed to a cross, he didn't now himself to the cross, right?

10:03

He was nailed to the cross. Therefore, the only way he could take his own life and that could actually be seen as suicide would be if he gave up his spirit.

10:13

In other words, he is can control of what no man can control. In other words, that he's

10:19

God. And so that's what you end up seeing there is that here.

10:24

The irony of this is that this their argument actually proves the thing they want to dispute that Jesus is

10:31

God. Now, the area where everyone kept giving issue is that I said that Jesus is made in the image of man and people said, well, isn't he is, you know, he made in the image of God.

10:42

Now, I'm taking that out of the book of Genesis. Okay, in Genesis, we're creating the image of God.

10:49

What does it mean back in Genesis when God says, let us make man in our image. It means that we have we're made special different than any other animal.

10:58

We're not an animal. We're created in his image. We have certain attributes that are communicated to us that are not communicated to animals such as things like ability to reason intelligence, things like emotions, things like a consciousness being self -aware being

11:16

God consciousness being aware of God. And so what you end up seeing is that I'm using it in that sense.

11:23

Now, what they do is they jump to the passages in the New Testament where the image that Jesus is in the image of God referring to Jesus as God.

11:33

Well, that's the whole thing there. You know, they're trying to dispute there. So Jesus can't be in the way

11:39

I'm using the term in the image of God. But if he has all the attributes of deity, if he has all the attributes of deity, then he has the attributes that human that are communicated to human beings.

11:53

And he also has the ones that are not communicated to human beings. So he has them all. That's what you end up seeing there.

12:01

That's what I how I was using it. Now, when you use the term image and you're going to compare to the way

12:07

I used it referring to the Old Testament, you're going to compare it to the way it's used in the New Testament and say they're the same.

12:13

You have a logical fallacy, a fallacy of equivocation. Fallacy of equivocation is when we take something, say something like the word image, give it has two different meanings.

12:25

And because the word is the same, we then apply it and change the meaning for it.

12:31

Now, I wasn't saying that Jesus is not the image of God the way the New Testament refers to it.

12:37

I was referring to it in the Old Testament sense when we are made in the image of God.

12:44

And so basically what we end up seeing there is that it's two different uses.

12:50

And so I'm not saying he's not God. In fact, the irony in the arguments that people said is they're trying to say that I'm claiming

12:58

Jesus is not God because they're misusing the term. In fact, and you could go on strivingforeternity .org,

13:06

do a search on if suicide is wrong, why did Jesus do it? Or you could just go for strivingforeternity .org

13:14

slash R -A -P -P dash daily dash 0389.

13:20

That's the episode. But as you see in there, I ended up saying there that he is

13:26

God. I made it very clear that we're made in the image of God. Is different than him being

13:33

God. I made that clear in the post and in the podcast. So I find it interesting that people want to argue that I'm saying

13:39

Jesus isn't God when I directly said he was. You see, and this is what you end up having.

13:45

So this is where you find most of your people who want to say that atheism is got a good argument because they say the

13:56

Bible has contradictions. Most often they're doing things like that. They're doing things where they are doing logical fallacies.

14:03

A lot of times it's an error like that. A fallacy of equivocation. It's one you're going to see.

14:09

They do. People do a lot. How else do they do it? You'll see it bring up the issue of slavery.

14:14

Slavery is wrong. What do they mean when they say slavery is wrong? They're referring to a slavery that was thousands of years after the

14:23

Bible. A slavery where people were kidnapped, brought over from Africa to here to America, and they ended up being slaves.

14:35

They had buyers. They were property. That's not what you see in the slavery of the

14:41

Bible. In the Bible, you see that it is wrong. God says you do not kidnap a person. We see that they weren't treated as property because if your animal ran away and goes to your neighbor's house,

14:56

God's Scriptures, God's Word says you return that animal to its owner.

15:03

But if your slave runs away to the neighbor, you don't return the slave.

15:08

Why? He's not property. Another thing they would say is, well, it's not slavery. You don't have any rights, actually.

15:16

No, the Bible made it clear that slaves did have rights. Slaves don't get paid.

15:22

Actually, no. In the Bible, they got a half day's wage. So what you end up seeing is a fallacy of equivocation.

15:28

What they do is they take the word slavery that has a meaning in American culture that's different than the culture of the

15:38

Bible, and then they try to attribute it there. And so that's often what you see.

15:46

Now, I wish Jeff came in so that we could discuss this more. I should actually try to send him a message maybe here and find out where he's at, because it's kind of a boring show with me arguing his arguments without him.

16:03

So and if anyone else wants to come in, ask any questions tonight. So because we have nobody in right now, so anyone that wants can go to Apologeticslive .com,

16:15

click the link to participate and come on in. And I will be happy to answer whatever questions

16:22

I can. I'll try to answer whatever questions you ask. But otherwise, it's going to be me giving more.

16:29

Well, what I think are bad arguments for atheism,

16:38

I wouldn't be the best one to give good or the best arguments for atheism. Okay, he says 10 minutes.

16:44

So I have to fill 10 minutes of air. All right. So I don't know if he's maybe he's watching, taking notes and going, okay, now

16:51

I know what he's going to say. But some other arguments that people make for God or against God is kind of interesting.

17:01

You'll often sometimes you'll get people that will say that the God of the Bible is, you know, a moral monster.

17:08

He's indicative and all these other things, which first precludes they, if they're arguing that God is somehow evil.

17:16

First off, they're acknowledging he exists. Because they're saying he's evil. Now, they'll try to say, well, no, he can't exist because that God would be evil.

17:27

But where do we get the idea of evil from? See, when we talk about good and evil, that itself requires

17:35

God. There has to be a standard. And so that would, I guess, argue for, let me grab this.

17:43

I would argue for, for God again. I don't know if our

17:48

Catholic friends are watching. A lot of times they are. Somebody decided to send me some

17:56

Roman Catholic material. And this is interesting that someone sent this to me, someone that's arguing for Catholicism.

18:03

I'm going to hold this up and see if you can read this. And so what it says is outside the

18:11

Catholic Church, there is absolutely no salvation. This is by my brother,

18:17

Peter Diamond. And so very lengthy, if you could see.

18:22

Look at the print on this, by the way. I mean, that's small print when you look at it from how big the thing is.

18:28

So this is a long letter that was sent to me. Both sides arguing, which is kind of interesting, arguing that you cannot be saved outside of the

18:41

Roman Catholic Church. I love this. You know why? Because that's actually good

18:46

Roman Catholic doctrine that many Roman Catholics don't want to argue.

18:52

They don't want to believe. And so, you know, what we end up seeing, someone's asking, is there an electronic copy of what do we believe?

19:04

Not yet. I got to get it on Kindle. I have not gotten around to that yet. I know it's been out for like almost a year and a half, and I still don't have it on Kindle.

19:15

I need to. But if you want to get a copy of what do we believe, you can certainly go to the Striving for Eternity website to the store there and pick up a copy at strivingforeternity .org.

19:26

And you can go to the store and pick up your own copy. It'll be a hard copy, but you can still pick it up.

19:35

So this is good Roman Catholic theology. All right. This thing that was sent, because that is the position that the

19:42

Roman Catholic Church takes. You cannot be saved in Roman Catholicism outside of the

19:47

Roman Catholic Church. And, you know, because of that, what you end up seeing is a lot of people will.

19:57

How can I? I don't want to say this in a way that might be disrespectful to folks, but I think that there's a lot of people who are either that believe in Roman Catholicism and either are ignorant to what

20:10

Roman Catholicism teaches. That's one option. Or they understand what

20:15

Roman Catholicism properly teaches, and they either don't want to believe it's true or they know it's not palatable.

20:24

So they don't want to say what it actually believes. In other words, the point being is what you end up seeing is that Roman Catholicism is going to say that if outside of the

20:36

Roman Catholic Church, you cannot be saved. And that's not very palatable.

20:42

And so it's no different than the folks who want to argue for Christianity without mentioning hell.

20:54

It's the same thing. You have people who are watering down what the true message is for the sake of trying to, well, make it more palatable.

21:06

All right. So we have in our friend Jeff here. Can you hear us?

21:14

Oh, he's getting his coffee. He's getting caffeinated for us. Yeah. Give me just a second.

21:20

Yeah. Okay. I'll put you off for a second there while you get some coffee.

21:28

We'll give him some time. He must need the caffeine to stay up and do this show. All right.

21:37

Let's see if you there, Jeff. I'm here. How's everybody doing? Good. Good. I'm glad to have you in with us.

21:44

I'm glad that we can maybe finish up our conversation. We only got started last week. I was trying to give the best arguments that I've heard from folks and trying to argue for you.

21:54

And I think you could do a better job arguing for yourself. How's that sound? Sure. We got some good feedback,

22:03

Jeff. From our short discussion that you and I had, people thought it was very respectful.

22:08

And I think some people were a little bit surprised that someone that professes to be an atheist and someone that's a

22:15

Christian could actually have a discussion where we disagree and yet be cordial to one another.

22:22

It's a crazy idea for some. Yeah, it is. But I am glad that you came back in.

22:28

So I'll start off. I want to let you start off actually with where we left off.

22:35

I wanted to give a chance, and for folks who are watching, let me just give you a chance to make your argument.

22:42

Here's the thing, folks, for some folks. I know there's people who when someone who has a different view is speaking, they want to give answers.

22:52

They want to just shout over them. You're not going to find me do that with Jeff. I'm going to try to be respectful to him and let him give his answers and speak.

23:03

And the reason is because that's how we have cordial conversations and show respect to one another.

23:10

So, you know, I know that some people kind of want to hear their side, you know, argue over the other.

23:16

I'm going to try not to do that. And I think I could be wrong, but I think Jeff won't do that to me. We'll see.

23:23

I try not. But so I just, because I do know I'm trying to Jeff.

23:28

I do know that some people are going to be like, oh, you let him talk too long. I want you to be able to, to make your arguments clearly.

23:34

I want to be able to interject just for clarity if I need to. And then we could go back and forth. Does that sound good? Sure. Yeah, no problem.

23:41

So this is a discussion, not a debate for folks. So, so make, make your arguments.

23:47

Let's let's see if we can interact with them. I know last time you said you had some notes so we can go through them. Yeah. So last week, the first thing

23:54

I brought up was the, the moral conflict between myself and what I read in the Bible.

24:00

And I would, I want to be clear that that doesn't prove that there is no God. Logically, you can't prove that there is no

24:07

God, but it does tell me that there's a problem between my, my comprehension and some concept of God, if that makes sense.

24:17

Especially when I hear people say that God is the foundation of morality, then

24:23

I, I really have to reject that because I do have a sense of right and wrong.

24:29

And that is in really stark contrast to a lot of the stuff I see in the Bible. So that leads me to think that either, either there is no

24:38

God or if there is a God, he's not interested in, in that might be the wrong way to say it, but there's, there's a problem there.

24:49

Okay. So let me start with the first one, because I think this will be the, I think there's going to be a lot that would be built off what, what the first part you said is you were saying that you're, you have a consciousness, right?

25:00

And that, and that gives you that, that is you have a sense of what's right and wrong. Correct. The conscience.

25:06

Yes. Okay. So your conscience, when you do wrong, you get a guilty feeling.

25:12

Correct. Right. Right. So, so just for folks to understand where I want to make sure we're a lot of times, people are not using the same terminology when they speak.

25:21

And I would just want to make sure for clarity sake, we're using the terms in the same way. So as, as we look at that.

25:29

Okay. The question is not whether you have a conscience, but where would your, where does your conscience come from?

25:37

Like if we're just pure material matter, right. There is no immaterial part of us.

25:45

There is no God. Where would we get a sense of right and wrong from in the first place?

25:52

That's the question. Sure. Yeah. And, and, and that's a good question. From, from, from what

25:59

I know, my, my best impression of it is that it's, it comes from two different places. First, there's a biological instinct that's just hardwired into all of us because we're a social species.

26:11

And, and there's been some science to show that other social animals also have this basic instinct for what we might call a pseudo morality or quasi proto morality would be a good way to say it.

26:24

You know, they, they cooperate, they share, they protect each other. I'm thinking of chimpanzees, horses, dogs, other social animals, and, and being social animals, we have that same instinct, but then on top of that biological instinct, our cultures build a structure of, of sophisticated and detailed rules and customs and traditions.

26:49

And, and they program that into us from birth, from childhood. And, and so that's, that's where morality comes from.

26:57

And that explains why you can have slightly different moralities and slightly different societies. But at the same time, everyone on earth pretty much does have the same basic set of right and wrongs.

27:09

Okay. So, I don't, I don't think you answered the question, but I don't think you realized it.

27:17

So let me ask it a different way. Right. So for, and first off, I think let's, let's, let me address the issue with animals that I would see.

27:26

I would look at animals and the question is, do they actually have a sense of right and wrong, or do we put our sense of right and wrong onto them?

27:37

In other words, you have vampire bats. I love to use that. This example, vampire bats and, and penguins, the, in the

27:46

Arctic, there's some with both of those groups of animals. There is a vampire bats.

27:53

For example, they go out, they, not to get anyone too grossed out, but they fly out. They maybe get a, you know, they get, they feed on blood, right?

28:01

So they, they go and find a cow, they drink the blood. One of the things with vampire bats, they go back to the cave, they huddle together and they share the blood with one another.

28:11

And if any of the bats don't share all the other bats, push them out of the, the, basically the group.

28:19

And he goes off on his own and either is by himself or, you know, dies because he doesn't have enough food.

28:25

Better examples, often the penguins, because what you see in the, in the penguins is you know, the male penguins sit there with an egg on their feet and they all have to huddle together to, to stay warm.

28:38

And if any of them don't move out, they basically rotate around. So they go from the outside of, of the circle, they move their way in and then they move their way back out so that they're, they warm up together and then they come back out and that's literally how they spend their day.

28:55

And if any of them don't continue moving back out, the other penguins push them out of the, of the circle and they freeze and die.

29:04

Now we look at that and we're attributing that to a morality, but yet there's those penguins did not sit there and get together and discuss it.

29:16

I would say that's instinct that we think is morality, but you don't see them setting up a court system or things like that.

29:24

Like we would, you don't see them, the, the, the penguin that, that does, doesn't do that.

29:30

You don't see guilt, you know, it's, it's, they have an instinct. So I guess what

29:35

I would, I would, I would say is that I think that we're attributing human factors or human behavior onto animals.

29:43

That'd be my answer for that. I don't know if you want to address that before we get to the question of what the, of me reasking the question.

29:52

Yeah. Just quickly. Well, you're, you're right. That is an instinct. And that's exactly the instinct

29:58

I'm talking about. And no, they, they don't establish courts and laws because they're, they're just not as sophisticated about it as we are.

30:05

But the foundation of it in both cases is that biological instinct. We just take it a step further because we have society and civilization and culture.

30:15

We, we do have, we do add on courts and laws and customs and traditions. Okay. And I think that's, that's different than a morality though.

30:27

Okay. I don't see the difference. I believe that actually, that actually is a morality that, that explains where morality comes from.

30:34

Our, our instinct and our sense for right and wrong. That's what that is. So you say it's, it's instinct, correct?

30:40

Just purely instinct. Instinct, not purely instinct, instinct plus culture. Okay. My, my instinct to be a social animal plus the culture that my, my parents and society, you know, programmed me with, instructed me with, indoctrinated me with, you know, growing up, those two things together there are morality.

31:00

Okay. So then the animals, the examples that we looked at don't have the cultural instinct.

31:06

So that wouldn't be morality by your definition. They just have that instinct without the culture.

31:12

So that wouldn't be morality. Some, some of the higher ones do have some, some very, very basic what you might call culture, you know, chimpanzees and bonobos do do things that we might call culture, but it's, it's a very primitive form.

31:29

Yeah. I, I would, again, I think that what it is, is us attributing things, you know, putting human behavior onto them.

31:35

But the issue is where do we get this? And I guess

31:41

Jason Manning, where did it, I'll put his question up is how do you get consciousness from biochemical reactions?

31:50

And then his other question was what biochemical reactions specifically produce a conscience.

31:55

And that's really what I'm getting to. It's that, that conscience, that part that you want to say is instinct plus culture, that cultural part that is your, your, your argument would have to be it's biochemical, correct?

32:11

The, the instinctive part of it. Well, it may be even the, at a certain level. Yeah. The cultural is too.

32:17

But how is that biochemical? You'd have to ask a neurologist or a neuroscientist for that.

32:23

Okay. If that was, okay.

32:28

So let me ask you this. Do you think we should carry that thinking out to and keep consistent with it as a, as a definition of morality?

32:38

Well, right now I don't see any reason why not. Do you have anything specific in mind or? Yeah, sure.

32:44

The thing that if we have that, then you can never put anyone in jail. Sure you can.

32:50

Because morality isn't something wrong to the person. It makes everything subjective.

32:55

Does it not? Well, yeah, but you can still enforce subjective rules. Who can?

33:01

Society can. Society. So who gets to decide those rules?

33:07

Is it who's ever in control? No, no, it's, it's, it's more it's more organic than that.

33:14

It's not, it's not, I wouldn't say never, but it's, it's, it's rarely a point where, you know, you have some

33:21

King or emperor in control who just decides that does happen in, in, in, in cases, but, but no, it's more, it's more natural than that.

33:31

It's just something that emerges from human society is this shared belief and shared culture about what's right and wrong.

33:39

But how does it emerge as I'm trying to get to with this? Like, so, so you're saying in some cases, an emperor can decide and that makes it moral, right?

33:49

Well, I mean, if those, those emperors who decided things that were in line with what humans generally believe are remembered as good emperors and, and those like Nero or Caligula who, who were stepped beyond the, the instinct and cultural component, we remember those as bad leaders, bad emperors.

34:13

So then if I'm going to follow that through you, would you think that what

34:21

Hitler did in killing 11 million people, 6 million Jews, was he wrong?

34:31

Put that in a, in a certain framework. I mean, you, you can put that within the culture of the

34:36

Nazi party in Germany and, and within that framework, it absolutely was not wrong, but the greater global culture at the time decided that it absolutely was wrong.

34:48

And I say decided, that's not the right word to use there. Realized might be a better word, realized that it was wrong.

34:55

And so you're, if you're asking me for my opinion, well, remember the culture and society that I'm from, the culture and society that programmed me with my morality, you know, here in the

35:06

United States in the late 20th century, then that's my morality. And I'm going to look at Hitler and say that was wrong.

35:13

Yeah. I mean, cause this is, this is the argument that the Nazis made during the Nuremberg trials.

35:19

They said what we did, our culture has accepted it. This is how morality is defined. Therefore, their argument was it was actually immoral for the

35:27

United States or anyone else to come in and do anything in reaction because they're not doing anything that's wrong.

35:35

That's their, their morality. So, so we ended up forcing our, our morality on others.

35:43

Essentially. Yes. So then doesn't that make mean that might makes right.

35:49

If, if we forced our, our morality on them, then we're the ones with the power we win.

35:55

We're right. Would that be fair to say? Well, it might is a, is a tool of what's right.

36:01

I mean, you can't, you can't change that biological instinct and changing culture can happen, but takes eons of time.

36:10

So, but, but yeah, might might is a tool of, of right. Okay. And so therefore, and, and I'm going to qualify this.

36:23

I believe that rape is wrong, but if you take that argument, we no longer have an argument against rape because between those two individuals who's ever stronger, they have the might.

36:35

If might makes right, makes it moral. Then a rapist can't be immoral in that culture of those two people, right?

36:44

Because he's, he's just forcing his culture, his cultural morality on the other, or she's stronger, which

36:52

I always like when that happens. And someone should, sure. I actually watched a video when

36:57

I was in college. This is, this is before the days of, of you know, YouTube and whatnot.

37:04

But if this was on YouTube now, it'd probably go viral. But I was friends with some of the police officers and they, they showed me this video.

37:12

They caught on camera in the parking lot at my university girls, you know, two girls walk to a truck.

37:18

One girl walks off, comes back. The girl's gone. She went to go get some books while she's gone.

37:26

There's three guys that come up who basically was, as was discovered later, they wanted to, to sexually abuse her.

37:34

You know, they want to rape her. They pulled a knife on her. She walks away from the truck and I would say it was probably like 45 seconds, maybe more, but it was really short period of time that she dismantled these guys.

37:47

I mean, just completely beat them to smithereens. Excellent. Which was just great to watch.

37:53

The police found out who she was. They wanted to know if she had pressed charges. They had, they had it on tape and she said she didn't want to press charges.

38:01

And you know, but the police didn't want to just leave it there. The officer said, we didn't leave it there.

38:07

It's like, so what'd you do? So what they did was they found out where these guys, the bar that these guys would always be drinking in.

38:16

Two sergeants came in really, really loud and approached the guys in the bar and said, Hey, by the way, we just want to let you know that girl that beat you guys up the other day doesn't want to press charges.

38:28

That's awesome. They were walking out there. People go, that was a girl.

38:33

I thought you said it was five guys. So it was like, they take, take the bragging rights away as well.

38:40

It was great. But side note, right? But the thing is in that situation, she was stronger.

38:49

She, we would say, therefore she was morally right. Or if they got away with it in that culture, small culture, they would be morally right.

38:59

Therefore, we really can't say, I would argue, we can't say that, that it's wrong then.

39:05

Not in any absolute objective sense. No. Well, Steve, but once you give up that absolutely objective sense, because this is the argument that was made in Nuremberg.

39:15

I don't know how much you may have studied about Nazi Germany and a little bit. Yeah. Okay. I, I, my background being

39:22

Jewish, I grew up studying that, studying it. So we were given lots of stuff, so we would never forget. But that was the arguments that they made at the

39:31

Nuremberg trials was that this is something that is not it's, it's a subjective morality.

39:39

Therefore they weren't wrong. And the argument that was given was that no morality is, you know, you're, you're going to be punished because morality is not subjective.

39:49

It's an absolute. And that, that was the arguments made. It'd be a good thing to go and look at some of those arguments to see what they're, how they, how they're made.

39:57

But the thing is, where do we get that from your arguing? It comes from culture, but yet, and, and, and so I think the confusion that you and I have,

40:10

Jeff, with this is to an extent you're right in, cause every, every law that the government passes, you can't smoke cigarettes before whatever age,

40:26

I don't know what the age is now. Maybe it's 18 or whatever. You can't, you can't drink before 21.

40:35

Okay. Well, that's a morality. And in that sense, you're right there. That is a subjective morality that the, the culture institutes.

40:43

And I'm going to agree with you on that. So there is a cultural component. My argument is going to be that we can't make that cultural component without having a component that we can only get from God that we don't see with animals.

40:58

And that's that, that guilt. Okay. And the sense of right and wrong in the, that we get from God.

41:06

So if you're saying that we get it from bio, you know, biochemistry or material things, where do we get, cause

41:16

I'm going to say that morality is immaterial. It's not something that we have. That's, that's concrete.

41:24

So. That's like, that's, that's like saying that hunger and thirst are immaterial and they're not concrete.

41:30

Well, they are immaterial, but they do have a, a physical component and instinct.

41:37

Yeah. Biological instinct. The, the, the thing though, is that there's a physical thing that happens within our bodies that we can, some that we can attribute something to it that is different, right?

41:53

We understand hunger, but we, but that also comes from our mind.

42:00

Right. Let me give you, um, I'm trying to think of how that Greg Coco sometimes doesn't, a thought experiment with folks and I may not do it right, but he'll tell people to, to think about and, uh, think about some, think about your mom, you know, in, in the kitchen, you know, at some point, right.

42:21

All right. Can you pick, can you picture that? Sure. Okay. What's she wearing?

42:28

Uh, uh, normal shirt and, and, and pants or whatever.

42:33

Yeah. What color is it? Uh, call it a tan and white.

42:40

But you see, that's, that's something that's just created in your mind, right? That's immaterial. She's not actually there.

42:46

Right. You can still see that. I can imagine it. Yeah. You imagine it.

42:52

And that's something that's immaterial. That, that's not a, that's not something that's a material.

43:00

She's not actually there. She's not actually wearing whichever color. Yeah. I think you said tan, right? Sure. Yeah.

43:06

You see, so, so the, the point I'm getting to is where we get the ability for this from, because, uh, how could

43:16

I, I, I, I think that what. We don't imagine our feelings when I feel hungry.

43:21

I'm not imagining that. I'm not just visualizing that in my head. That's so, it's a real feeling. It's, it's a, um, excuse me.

43:29

It's a, it's a real legitimate, you know, sensation and, and, and feeling of, of hunger or thirst or, you know, guilt or, or pride or whatever.

43:40

These are, these, these are triggered by instinct more or less. How, how about, uh, see,

43:46

I like, I like the way Jason Manning works. He goes exactly where I was going to go next. I was going to go to laws of logic and he just posted it.

43:55

Um, so let, let me, I want to go to laws of logic. Cause I'm going to say that those are immaterial. Would you agree?

44:02

Yes. Yes. I w I would agree. Yes. Okay. So then where do we get, because you, you went to the morality one, which, you know,

44:11

I, I prefer typically going to laws of logic. Where do we get the laws of logic from?

44:17

It's, it's a human construct, a human construct. It's like, like language.

44:22

Okay. Okay. So it's something purely that was created in the minds of man. Yes, I would think so.

44:29

Okay. Um, so let's, let's do an experiment together, a thought experiment. Um, you and I would both agree there was a time before humans, correct?

44:41

Uh, yes. Okay. I'm going to say about 6 ,000 years ago, you're going to say more, I'm guessing.

44:47

I would say a great deal more. Yes. Okay. Uh, I want to go with the second law of logic.

44:54

Okay. That, that's the law of non -contradiction. So technically speaking, you and I spoke about logical before, right.

45:01

But for folks who are, who are listening and watching, you can't have a and not a in the same way and the same time.

45:09

Correct. Right. Yes. Okay. And so for folks who don't understand it, cause

45:14

I know you have a Jeff, you got a background, you understand logic, but not everyone does an easy way to explain it is you can't have $20 in your wallet and not have $20 in your wallet at the same time in the same way.

45:28

In other words, you could have $20 in your wallet now or had it before, but you don't have it now.

45:37

So in other words, I could say I got $20 in my wallet, meaning that I had it an hour ago, but I just spent it and it's not there now.

45:43

Well, that's the same time. Right. The same way would mean you can't tell me you have $20 in your wallet and I ask you to prove it and you pull out $20 in monopoly money cause it's not the same way.

45:57

Okay. Is that a good, you think that's a good enough way to explain it to folks? Yes, absolutely. You have a better way of explaining or a better example maybe.

46:05

No, that works for me. All right. I just want to make sure that like, not everyone studies logic. Okay. Nice.

46:12

So all of that to get to the thought experiment before there were human minds, before there was any human beings,

46:18

I'm going to say 6 ,000 years, you're probably going to say millions of years, but there was that time before human beings could the universe have existed and not existed in the same way and the same time?

46:33

Uh, no, not, not in the sense that we there that there is a physical universe with stars and planets and galaxies on that, on that big macro level.

46:43

No, no, that would be illogical. Okay. And I agree with you, which means that we've just proven that we don't believe that you and I both agree that it can't be a human construct.

46:58

But there was no human being before there was a human being, but there's two, there's two human beings talking about it right now using logic to explore that question.

47:09

Yeah, but that wasn't, the question wasn't today. The question was before there was man, could the universe have existed and not existed?

47:16

So I'm not talking about our discovery of the laws of logic. I'm actually talking about the laws themselves.

47:23

So if the universe couldn't have existed and not existed, then that law, though, it may not have had a name yet to humans.

47:33

I would agree that it does come from a mind, just that it comes from the mind of God.

47:42

No, I would disagree. I know you would. You kind of have to, but that's, that's going to be the argument.

47:51

But here's the thing is it does come from a mind because before there was a human being, these laws still were in place.

47:59

They're not really in place now. So they've never, never really been in place.

48:05

The universe doesn't work on, on, on the laws of logic, not at the most basic level. It doesn't.

48:10

In the physical world, you're going to, I can agree with that, but see, there's an immaterial part of, and that's, that's, this is where I see the real issue that, that I think we have with it is with each of these things, whether it's the morality or the logic, there's an element of physical material truth that I'm going to agree with you.

48:35

All right. You're like, when we talked about laws law that you can't drink under 21, right?

48:40

Both agree that's cultural, correct? Yes. Okay. But the question really isn't the laws themselves, but where we get the ability to do these things.

48:50

So where do we get the ability to have morality? Where do we get the ability to reason? Where do we get the ability to discover the laws of logic?

48:57

That would be the questions. So it's, so I think where we, we talk past each other a lot of times between Christians and atheists is that we're, we're, when

49:08

I'm speaking, at least with things like this, I'm speaking of where we get that ability to do these things. It's just, it's just a product of human intelligence.

49:19

Well, that's a, that's assumed, but is there proof for that? I would have to think for a minute.

49:27

You might prove that it's, it's a product. I mean, well, I mean, it has to be,

49:33

I mean, I would just, I would almost have to take that as an axiom.

49:40

These, these abilities to think or do things or contemplate or invent concepts.

49:46

That's of course, that's a product of human intelligence. That's just axiomatic, I think. Well, I think where it is is we'd have to, you're assuming the thing that you want to prove in that sense.

50:03

So I think, I think that it's begging the question. Maybe, maybe

50:08

I would need to contemplate that for a while. Yeah. I mean, I look, I'm not the thing. I hope you realize,

50:14

I'm not trying to play a gotcha game here. Okay. That's not how I do things. You know,

50:20

I want, I want it to be where, you know, we have honest discussion.

50:27

Yeah, I agree. So, I mean, look, I'll be really clear.

50:33

There's, there's no hiding with me what my goal is with talking with you, Jeff. I think you probably could guess this.

50:39

My position is that God exists. He has spoken.

50:45

You and I both break his law. We've, we've, you know, we lie, we steal, we do things that would make us a criminal in his sight and that he is as a just judge is going to going to punish us.

50:58

Okay. So my biggest concern for you is going to be where you spend eternity. That to me, that's the most important thing in the discussion is, and yet I know that you have things that are stumbling blocks for you to get to, to understand that stuff.

51:15

And that's why, you know, the dialogue when people are playing gotcha things just to get great YouTube clips or something, well, fine for them, but that's, you know,

51:23

I, my, my concern, my greatest concern in our conversation is where you spend eternity.

51:29

And if there is an eternity, yeah, I agree. But I think that I, I'm going to argue there is one, right.

51:37

But I'm actually going to argue, I'm going to argue that denying it is what we'd see in Romans chapter one.

51:44

It's a suppressing of the truth that we, that we know. And that's why every culture believes in a God and believes in, in an eternal state because I think

51:53

God puts that in us. And I'm going to say that that's there so that we would know no right from wrong and be able to recognize that we've broken

52:08

God's law. Okay. So let me just share this with you. I don't,

52:13

I don't know your upbringing and we could, we could talk about this. But my, my thing would be is if you and I break

52:26

God's law and he's just, he's going to judge us, you and I both would deserve eternity in a lake of fire because God's infinitely

52:36

Holy. So by, by, and this is sometimes a hard concept for us to think about, but because of the nature of God, it carries an eternal consequence.

52:48

God came to earth as a man, paid the price, died on a cross as a payment of sin. That's how serious sin is that God himself is the one that would pay it.

52:59

And my concern for you is that if you die in the state that you're currently in denying

53:04

Christ, you would have to pay for that for all of eternity. And, and my heart breaks for you for that.

53:11

Okay. I don't want that for you. Yeah. I understand you believe that. And it, it may actually be true.

53:17

I'm not even saying it isn't true. I'm just saying, you know, all of that assumes that all of that is real, which

53:24

I don't think has been demonstrated yet. See, but the, the, the argument is,

53:30

I'm going to say is, but do you, do you put the same standard on your current belief?

53:39

In other words, for atheism, does it have to be proven for you to believe it? Or are you going to deny it if there's not proof for it?

53:48

Deny atheism if there's not proof for it. In other words, you're saying, well, I don't believe the God exists because there's not enough evidence for it.

53:56

And yet, even in this short discussion, there isn't enough evidence to support that morality comes about by biochemical reactions.

54:05

Well, I believe there is. I know you believe it, but if, if I was to, if I was to play the atheist to your worldview, right.

54:14

Which could be, but, but basically if I was to, to say, well, there's not enough evidence to convince me that your position is right.

54:26

Okay. Make it not true. No, no, it's just, it's what

54:32

I lean toward because it's what I have the best evidence for. It could be wrong, but it's, it's what

54:37

I have. The, these, these experiments with animals acting in social ways, you know, showing some, some instinct for, you know, proto morality.

54:46

And, and plus, you know, what I know about cultural indoctrination, that seems like a good plausible explanation for morality to me.

54:54

I could be wrong that that could be wrong. It's just going on the best evidence

54:59

I have so far. But wouldn't you say that that evidence is also tainted by your culture that you said you were indoctrinated with?

55:10

Well, it has to be. And I can't separate my, I don't know. How would you, how would you separate yourself from that? That would be like, you know, trying to step outside your own body and look at yourself.

55:19

I don't know how you even would do that. I guess I did do that. Except, except to just, you know, try to apply the best scientific method you can to it and eliminate it as much of your own bias as you can.

55:33

But I don't know if I could ever do that or not. Well, let me, let me give you the, the bias that I had growing up.

55:40

Okay. I told you I grew up Jewish. I grew up believing that Jesus Christ is Hitler's God. So clearly

55:46

I wasn't a fan of Jesus Christ. Yet I became a believer in Jesus Christ in about three and a half hours.

55:55

Okay. So what made the change? It clearly wasn't my upbringing and it wasn't that I was, there are people,

56:02

I will admit there are people who are rebellious against, if they're raised in a Christian home, they're rebellious.

56:09

A generation ago, if they wanted to rebel against religious parents, they would become atheists.

56:16

And now what they do is they become, they practice homosexuality. So, you know, it's, it's, you know, there is a rebellion.

56:27

I'm not going to deny that people don't react in rebellion to their upbringing.

56:32

I was not that way. I wasn't in rebellion. I, I had no desire to believe in Christ.

56:38

I didn't want anything to do with them. And yet I ended up believing them because when

56:45

I looked at the Bible, I look at the, the prophecies in the old Testament and the new Testament, I ended up realizing that mathematically those can happen by coincidence.

56:57

Okay. And now some people can argue. So I'm going to try to, I hope that you recognize,

57:02

I don't just sit here and give one side. I try to be fair with the arguments and see it from both positions, but I could,

57:09

I could see people arguing that, well, you know, you can have people that knew these prophecies were going to happen.

57:16

And yet they, so they, they wrote down the things to fulfill those prophecies and yet some of the prophecies in the

57:24

Bible were not fulfilled in scripture. They were filled in history outside of the

57:29

Bible and history. You have Alexander, the great fulfilled old Testament prophecies.

57:35

Now, no one was, he wasn't doing it for that purpose. He was doing that because he was, he was at war and wanted, you know, wanted things from a city.

57:44

And so he just created a causeway from the old city to a new city. Well, that was actually prophesied.

57:51

So things like that convinced me that you can't have that by chance mathematically. And when you look at those, that's where you get into the thing of saying, okay, and the reason

58:04

I'm going to appeal to math is math is the only, out of the sciences that we look at, it's the only absolute science.

58:10

I don't know if you'd agree with that statement. Universal. I would say it's, it's universal.

58:18

Okay. I mean, well, I guess you get into fuzzy math that people argue, but, but you know, it's like two plus two is always going to equal four.

58:27

Yeah. If you're not playing games with, you know, negative, you know, you know,

58:33

I'm not going to get it. Like if I'm going to, when I use that example, I'm usually, it's like, okay, absolute, absolute two, you know, but so what you end up having, what you end up having is that there are, then when mathematically you look at that, the chance of all those prophecies happening by just coincidence is beyond 10 to the 48th power, which is what we would call statistical impossibility.

59:00

So the argument I'd make is it is mathematically impossible for the Bible not to be written by a being that is outside of time and knows what we would call past, present, and future.

59:16

So Alexander the great built a causeway between two cities and it's mathematically impossible that someone would see that coming ahead of time without divine insight.

59:29

Well it's not just that one example, but that example was one that I use because Alexander the great wasn't reading the

59:38

Bible to figure out what to do. He was, he was going to, basically there was a city tire that was on mainland, got destroyed and they went out to an

59:49

Island. And basically the prophecy is that the, you know, the old city would be thrown into the sea and that the army would march on.

59:57

And because the tire would move to the, as an

01:00:02

Island city, they'd feel comfortable and not have walls. And that would allow the army to just march on in and just demolish them.

01:00:10

And Alexander great, just, he sent out a ship to, to the Island, you know, give us supplies.

01:00:17

They said no cause they figured they were safe and he just took the old rubble of the old city, threw it into the sea, made a causeway, marched onto the, the

01:00:25

Island city of tire and, and demolished them. Is this, is this the same prophecy that says that after that tire will never be rebuilt again?

01:00:33

Yeah. And it's still there today and there's people living in tire today because they rebuilt it.

01:00:39

And it's, it's rebuilt the, the way it was. I mean, it's, it's the nation that it was. It's rebuilt.

01:00:46

I mean. Yeah, but that's not, so when it says that to be rebuilt right there, it was that it would be the, the empire, the, the kingdom that it was.

01:00:56

And yeah, you may have, you have a few people living there, but it's not what it was. Anything that's ever destroyed is never going to be what it was again.

01:01:05

And even after it's rebuilt. If you have the nation of, you have the

01:01:11

Egyptian empire and they were, they were destroyed, but they were rebuilt and they were an empire again, you know?

01:01:17

So yeah, you can have that. So we've got to put it in the context there of how it's meant. So the prophecy said that the city would be destroyed and it would never be rebuilt exactly the way it was before.

01:01:28

It would never be a major city that like that. Correct. That's not super impressive. Well, that's one of hundreds of prophecies.

01:01:36

See, so, so here, here's what you end up doing is you can take every one of them. And you know, you could try to, you can, you can make excuses for them.

01:01:51

Okay. So let's, let's do an experiment, Jeff. Roughly. How old are you?

01:01:56

You don't have to give me exactly. 40. 40. Okay. Roughly 40. Born somewhere in the

01:02:02

United States? Yes. Okay. So let's do, let's do a game. All right. Cause I want to show you what, what

01:02:10

I think people do when they come upon Christians and try to argue, I think sort of like the way you are.

01:02:16

So I'm going to make the claim that your name actually is Steve. You were born in Italy in 1942.

01:02:26

Can you prove that I'm wrong? I think I probably can. Yes. Sure.

01:02:32

Go for it. I can show you my birth certificate that says my name is Jeff. I was born in Nevada in 1977.

01:02:39

And I would say people can make fake birth certificates. My grandmother had one that claimed that she was two years older than she actually was.

01:02:46

Some think Barack Obama has a fake birth certificate, so they could be faked. Yes, they can be faked.

01:02:54

I guess we would need to first establish what we're going to agree counts as proof that you are the first person

01:03:02

I've done this with probably hundreds of people. You're the first person to go there. Cause that's really the, that's where we need to go first, but you're right.

01:03:10

I would say, okay, let's, let's back up and let's both agree on what counts as proof. So you say, cause that's, that's the thing.

01:03:17

I mean, ultimately anything that, that you say, I'm going to have an excuse for it.

01:03:23

If you tell me your parents, you go ask my parents, I'm going to say they've been lying to you all your life. They're not going to tell you the truth.

01:03:29

Now, if you're going to say, look at my driver's license, I'm going to tell you I had a fake one of those when I was a kid, right?

01:03:35

No matter what you say, I can, if I work from a position of confirmation bias, and I know you probably understand what that means, but for others who aren't actually,

01:03:46

I'll let you, can you, you want to define confirmation bias? Yeah. Put simple, put simply confirmation bias is believing something first and then selectively seeing or not seeing evidence for it.

01:03:57

Correct. Okay. So I just wanted to, you know, I, I don't want to do all the talking.

01:04:03

No, it's fine. I don't mind. And I think it's an area where you, you, you'd be perfectly fine. We agree with the answer.

01:04:10

So, so if you work from a position of confirmation bias, if I start with a position that your name is

01:04:16

Steve, you were born in Italy in 1942, no matter what you give me, I'm going to reject any evidence out of hand because it doesn't work with my conclusion.

01:04:27

Right. And the, the human imagination can always invent ways to dismiss, you know, things like that.

01:04:33

We get very creative. And, and see, that's what I think that this is what

01:04:39

I believe. Most people that profess to be atheists do they, they have a confirmation bias and all humans have a confirmation bias.

01:04:48

If, if you're a human, you have confirmation bias, Christian, atheist, Muslim, Hindu, whatever.

01:04:54

If you're human, you have confirmation bias. Well, and we're going to, so the question that we have to end up seeing is, can we, and I believe we can, can we question our own presuppositions?

01:05:08

I think I actually argue we must, I, I, I would love, you know, this, whoever

01:05:15

Dirk Jan, I don't know if I pronounced that right, but he says, the Bible contradicts itself or the, or I said earlier, the

01:05:23

Bible's full of contradictions. I'd love to see some because what we've constantly seen over and over again is that it's not full of contradictions.

01:05:36

Most of them are easily explained away. They're not contradictions. But, and if, and if you're willing to do a lot of gymnastics and contortions, they're all explained away.

01:05:47

Well, yeah, there's some that there's some, see, and I won't, I mean, there's some that I'm going to say, well, gee, I just, you know we don't know which one's right type of thing.

01:05:55

I mean, I don't, I don't do I, I remember speaking with a rabbi once and the, the thing that ended up happening was there's a passage where you have a textual variant in the old

01:06:11

Testament. Solomon had, I forget the numbers offhand, but it's like 10 ,000 chariots and a thousand horse, a thousand tree.

01:06:21

And in Chronicles, it has, the numbers are switched. Same numbers. It's just the chariots versus men are switched.

01:06:31

Which one's right? I would just say it's a textual variant and it doesn't matter. But the rabbis who would argue that every word has been absolutely preserved the same way that the

01:06:43

Muslims would say with the Quran, then you have the problem because they're going to say, well, God inspired it to be an error.

01:06:48

You know, it's like, no, that was a human, there was a typo before there were typos. Yeah. Yeah.

01:06:57

But I mean, but once you, once you allow for doing these, these gymnastics and contortions to explain away contradictions, then there's no such thing as contradictions.

01:07:06

At that point, the Quran is free. There's no contradictions in the Quran or the

01:07:11

Tanakh or the Bhagavad Gita or Moby Dick, or, you know, pick any dime store novel off a bookshelf somewhere.

01:07:20

And if you're willing to do these, these bends and contortions to explain away things, then you're, there's never a contradiction in any book at that point.

01:07:28

Well, but I would, I would argue you were doing the same bending and contortions when we were talking about where morality comes from.

01:07:37

I wasn't doing it consciously because I really do believe that's the best explanation for it. Yeah. And so I could look at the contradiction, the supposed contradictions in the

01:07:47

Bible. I'm not doing the gymnastics over them. Most, I would say out of all the ones that I've been given as a supposed contradiction, this is going to be a subjective number, but out of the ones

01:08:01

I've been given. So this is, I'm saying that's subjective. I haven't looked. And it might be a good idea to do is actually look at all the supposed contradictions and see what they fit in the category.

01:08:10

But I would say about 70 to 75 % of them fit in a category of someone not studying the culture.

01:08:16

They just don't understand the culture of the time. And, you know, once you understand the culture, these things are easily answered.

01:08:24

The other 25 %? The other 25 % I think fit into, I think there's some that are textual variances.

01:08:32

There's some that are, I'll give you one that I think of that many people try to argue is that the gospels are an eyewitness account.

01:08:42

And so what you have sometimes is someone I'll mention, you know, two blind men that get healed by Jesus. One passage refers to one blind man that Jesus speaks to.

01:08:51

The other passage refers to two blind men that are healed and it's the same event. And so people say, see, it's a contradiction.

01:08:58

One says one set, one says two that's there. There's no gymnastics they have to do. Two people were there.

01:09:03

One writer as an eyewitness is referring to the two people that got healed. Another writer is focused on the conversation.

01:09:09

So he only mentions the one person that two were healed, but the one person that had the conversation with him.

01:09:16

So that's, that's not a gymnastic thing. That's simple. I mean, we have that. Every day in the news, right?

01:09:24

I mean, you, right. That that's, it's actually, are you familiar with Jay Warner Wallace?

01:09:31

No, I'm not. Okay. Jim Wallace, he goes by Jay Warner. Cause there's another Jim Wallace in Christianity.

01:09:37

That's a liberal. And so he didn't want to be associated with him. So his books go by Jay Warner Wallace, but Jim has, he's got a book called cold case

01:09:45

Christianity. I'm going to give you his background real quick. He's a cold case detective, 20 years LA police working cold cases.

01:09:52

And one of his, the area where his expertise is is in the area of being able to identify eyewitness testimony.

01:10:02

And, and he does it as a detective. He was an atheist for most of his, his life. He did not believe in Christianity.

01:10:09

He would say he was an atheist. He didn't, he would challenge that his

01:10:14

Christian coworkers, but he ended up applying that to his expertise, to the four gospel accounts, because he figured this is an area he knows.

01:10:26

And he was going to basically try to prove that as an expert in the field of eyewitness testimony, he was going to prove that the gospels are not eyewitness testimony and therefore debunked his

01:10:39

Christian coworkers. He actually came to the conclusion that it was good eyewitness testimony. And that's what actually convinced him that the

01:10:47

Bible was, was accurate and true was because he saw what was being said and he recognized it as, as proper eyewitness testimony.

01:10:55

He, you know, there's things that when people try to make up a story, they try to align their stories.

01:11:00

He's, you know, you, you have to have where one person is going to refer to the two blind people.

01:11:05

One's going to refer to one blind person because they have different purposes in explaining those, those events.

01:11:12

So I, I, I put most of those other ones in areas like that. There are a couple, just don't know.

01:11:20

I'll be honest. I forget the passage. There was one passage that where it said like one of the, had the disciples bring,

01:11:32

I think I forget exactly what it was, but Christ told the disciples to bring a cloak and a, and a sword.

01:11:38

And one says, don't bring a cloak and not a sword. It's something like that.

01:11:44

I don't, don't quote me exactly. Sure. There's no textual variances that we know of in, in the two passages.

01:11:54

So with, with that, you can't, you can't write it. I mean, a lot of those types of things, there are textual variances.

01:12:02

Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to be, you know, looking at the text. There's not a textual variant there.

01:12:08

So it's one where, okay, I don't know. Is that a contradiction? Well, if they're speaking of the same event, it could be, but it could also be a similar event, but he's speaking to two different people.

01:12:23

And the eyewitnesses that overheard him telling one person, maybe for some reason he tells one now notice you're going to say that's doing gymnastics.

01:12:31

I'm saying, I don't know the answer. Okay. That's fair enough. I don't know is always an honest answer.

01:12:37

Yeah. I mean, it's, there's, there's, there are, I think, plausible answers. So now that, but here's, here's going to be a thing like, like you were saying, you know, the, the

01:12:49

Quran or, you know, other books, see in the Quran, you have, you'll have passages that define the

01:12:57

Trinity, the Christian Trinity as three gods. And in one

01:13:04

Surah, it will actually name them being Mary as the God, you know, where, where Allah says to Muhammad, you know, or to Jesus, have

01:13:14

I ever said to you or your mother to worship, to be worshiped as God? Okay.

01:13:20

Well, that's a contradiction in definition, right? That's not one that we can really explain away because that's one where the definition of the

01:13:29

Trinity is very clear. One God and it's father, son, and spirit. But if you, if you have someone that claims to be

01:13:38

God in all knowing, he should know that. I would argue that the writer of the Quran being

01:13:44

Muhammad or not really Muhammad, it's, it's him telling it and people writing it down, but the author of the

01:13:49

Quran wasn't in Christian lands. And so he wouldn't know the proper definition of the

01:13:57

Trinity. And he would only know from the heretics that get kicked out of the empire. And so in, in not understanding it, they would come to the conclusion that this is worshiping three gods.

01:14:10

Okay. Right. And I, I would bet good money that you could find a

01:14:15

Muslim apologist who can make sense of all that. All the time.

01:14:21

Yeah. I mean, what they all try to argue is that there are groups of Christianity that do worship

01:14:28

Mary as God. And that actually undermines their argument without realizing it because when they argue that way, they're arguing that the

01:14:36

Quran does actually say what it says. And once, once they admit that, you know, it's like, okay, if, but there are, there may be some groups, some fringe groups that believe that worship

01:14:49

Mary. Okay. You could say the Catholic church worships Mary, but they even give her attributes that only

01:14:57

God would have, but they're very clear that they don't believe she's God. Okay. So you can't really use the

01:15:04

Catholic church even for that argument. So what ends up, what I ended up seeing there is you end up seeing that there's a definition, a contradiction in definition.

01:15:14

Now that's a contradiction. That's a real issue. Well, in, in, in my mind and in your mind, but I don't think it's a contradiction in that Muslim's mind.

01:15:23

Well, see, but in the Muslims, what they do is they try to argue that there are sects of Christianity that believe this, but the fact that there may be a sect here or there, that's not what

01:15:33

Christianity actually believes. That's what some, some small group. And so it wouldn't, you know, like, so why would

01:15:40

God when he's criticizing Christianity and defining it with of Christ give a view that would be seen as heretical from Christianity?

01:15:52

Right. And I'm, I'm not super familiar with the example that you're talking about right now. I'm just, I'm, I'm just saying that I'm sure that in the mind of a

01:15:59

Muslim, that all makes sense. Well, I will, I've seen where in the mind of many

01:16:06

Muslims, they will literally throw logic right out the window. And, and I've, I've seen,

01:16:12

I've seen where, you know, they believe that God wrote through, you know,

01:16:19

Moses and then men corrupted it and God wrote through David and men corrupted. God wrote through Jesus and then men corrupted it.

01:16:26

Then God wrote through the comet and they say, and it's perfect. Now, logically, okay.

01:16:34

His word wouldn't be corrupted and yet men corrupted it. And yet we know that when the Quran did start getting written, write it written down, which was 18 years after Muhammad died.

01:16:45

So we couldn't go back to Muhammad to collaborate it. They start writing it down because they had it from memory and there were different versions because the colleague said, burn the abhorrent texts.

01:16:56

Well, if, if they all agreed, there'd be nothing to burn. Right. So how do you know you got the right one?

01:17:03

Well, that's just a, they end up having a blind faith within and go, no, it could, it couldn't be corrupted logically.

01:17:08

You have to accept that. It could have been right. It's fascinating to me how easily someone in one religion can find the fallacies and biases in another religion.

01:17:22

Well, um, I, I think that, I mean you're, you're, you're raised, you're razor sharp on your, your, your criticism of Islam here.

01:17:30

Yeah. And, but what I find fascinating, Jeff, is that you recognize that with other religions, but you don't do it with your own.

01:17:37

That may be the case. And there's that confirmation bias coming up again.

01:17:44

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and this is the, you know, if, if nothing else, I know there's a couple of the guys that are here in here and some did have questions for you as well.

01:17:53

Um, and then some of them have questions for me. Um, and I should let folks know that if there's anyone else who, who wants to come in, you can go to apologeticslive .com.

01:18:01

Uh, we got about 40 minutes left in the show. So if you want to come in, it's, it is an open

01:18:07

Q and a as well. So if folks have other questions you can come in and ask, um, I'm going to add

01:18:12

John in cause he had a question for actually before I had John in, I'm going to put John on hold.

01:18:18

Now John's like going, I was almost in. Uh, I'm going to take a, uh, do a quick commercial break.

01:18:24

Is that okay, Jeff? Yeah, sure. All right. Let me give you a quick commercial break. Folks, if you want to join

01:18:30

Striving Fraternity, uh, to go into Israel in 2021, this is March of 2021, a year and a half away, plenty of time to plan.

01:18:40

Um, we're going to Israel. We're taking, uh, it's going to be the speakers at Striving Fraternity, which is

01:18:45

Dr. Anthony Silvestro, Pastor Frank Mullis, and myself will be joined by Justin Peters.

01:18:51

It will be 13 days in Israel, uh, going to different sites in the Holy land.

01:18:56

And so we have the website 2021israeltrip .com

01:19:01

has all the information. And so I will say that when that opens up right now, there's going to be a two week period where those that, uh, had responded to the

01:19:12

Striving Fraternity newsletter, uh, there was a survey in there and anyone who filled out that survey, they have two weeks to respond before it opens up, uh, the registration to everybody else, uh, that was decided the way that the organizer that's, that's planning all this, he wanted to give them the, the ability to respond first since they had filled out the survey and showed that interest.

01:19:35

But if you would like to go, it'll be in two weeks from when we're recording today. Um, so that should go live,

01:19:43

I guess, in, uh, September 12th. So around September 12th on that website, there will be a link.

01:19:51

And that's when you would be able, if you haven't filled out that survey, that you'll be able to, uh, register if you want to go, it's going to be a great trip.

01:20:00

We're going to have, like I said, 13 days, we're going to be doing a lot of, a lot of sites.

01:20:06

We got a guided tour. Uh, we actually had so much response from the newsletter.

01:20:11

The person who organizes it couldn't believe he actually has been doing this for a decade now.

01:20:18

And he never had the response that he had, uh, from that survey with our group. We actually are thinking, we may have to do two buses.

01:20:26

So this is going to fill up quick. So if you didn't fill out that survey and you want to go, my suggestion is, uh, when that opens up in two weeks in September, uh, to make sure that you go to 2021israeltrip .com

01:20:39

and join us for a trip to Israel. You have plenty of time. If you need to save money, uh, there's a lot of time, a year and a half to start saving, uh, all the money doesn't have to be paid up front.

01:20:50

And just so you know, we're not, you know, we're not making money on this. It's, we're doing this to try to get folks to go to the

01:20:58

Holy land, be able to see some of the actual places where we see described in scripture.

01:21:04

So, uh, if you'd like to join us, that would be wonderful. Now I'll bring John in and, uh,

01:21:11

John, you said you had some questions for Jeff. Yeah.

01:21:16

Hey, how you doing? Was that the only question you had for Jeff?

01:21:25

Okay. I'm doing good. Thank you. Oh, good. Good. Good. Okay. I was wondering if you heard me or not.

01:21:32

Um, you just shattered my whole worldview with that question. My job is done.

01:21:37

All right. I should now mute. I should now mute John and go to Andrew. That's also waiting. Right. Okay. You got your chance,

01:21:43

John. That was your question. Awesome. Uh, okay. Hey Jeff, uh, absolute truth.

01:21:49

Does it exist or not? No, no, it does not. Uh, okay.

01:21:58

Uh, is that absolute? Yeah. Um, this is

01:22:04

John or this is Cy. What was his name? Yeah, exactly. Uh, yeah, no, it is.

01:22:10

These are exactly what the kind of questions that he, he asked before. And I think that, uh, yeah,

01:22:16

I, I think that those are important questions to ask. I mean, where do you get absolute truth from?

01:22:23

So truth, as I see it has, has two cents, two meanings. There's the, um, the everyday colloquial meaning where we just throw the word out and don't think much about it and say, yeah, that's true.

01:22:35

Um, but then in propositional logic, we, we assign truth values and degrees of confidence to certain propositions and premises and ideas.

01:22:46

Um, but as far as absolute truth, you know, somewhere in the foundation of the universe,

01:22:51

I, I don't see any reason to believe that. So I'll now

01:22:57

I'm going to switch over to Matt Slick's question that he would always ask. Is it always wrong for anyone to torture babies merely just for pleasure?

01:23:04

Okay. I'm going to stop you because I'm going to ask a different question for different reasons. Okay. Um, because if I was

01:23:11

Jeff, I would, I'd rip the question apart the same way I do with Matt.

01:23:16

Now I know why Matt uses that. Uh, there's a better way I think to, to word that, um, logically, and I'm going to do this because I know

01:23:23

Jeff has a background in logic and stuff. And, and you can quickly jump on the fact that it's not a true dichotomy because there's too many variables there.

01:23:32

So I'll, I'll, I'll ask Jeff, Jeff, I'm going to ask the question. I think he's trying to get to with a different question.

01:23:39

Okay. It'd be a similar thing. Um, is the act of rape always wrong?

01:23:47

Is the act of rape always wrong itself? In my opinion?

01:23:54

Yes. But I have to qualify that by saying, in my opinion. Okay. So then the answer actually would be no, because it's not always wrong.

01:24:02

It's all, it would only be wrong in your mind you'd say. And, and, and some objective, no,

01:24:08

I mean, it's, it's not, there, there is no, there is no objective wrong to base this question on.

01:24:18

So then it could be right. The act of rape could be right for some people. It's, I mean,

01:24:27

I, I, I go back to, you know, different cultures that have different moralities where, as an example of where it was right in certain cases at certain times.

01:24:40

Okay. And I would say that just because the culture says it's okay, doesn't make it right.

01:24:46

I mean, just like we went in to Nazi Germany. Um, I wasn't thinking of Nazis.

01:24:52

I was thinking of the ancient Israelites. Ah, okay. And so what were you thinking?

01:25:00

I'm thinking of the past years where they, they conquer the pagan lands and keep the virgins for themselves.

01:25:07

Yeah. Okay. That, that's perfect. That's a, that fits into what we were talking about earlier. It's a, fits into the category of not understanding the culture.

01:25:15

We could get into that because that actually is one, I think. So if, if I understood the culture, then

01:25:20

I would understand how what they did is morally okay. Oh yeah. They had a responsibility to care for the women.

01:25:26

They, they couldn't just, they couldn't just throw the women. They couldn't kill them because they, the women weren't fighting, so they couldn't discard the women.

01:25:34

And yet they had a responsibility to care for those women for the rest of their lives. They didn't have any problem killing

01:25:41

Amalekite women and children. Okay. And so there's, and there are some reasons for that. And there, and what you end up seeing there is you do, you did see that they were warned ahead of time that that would be what would happen.

01:25:51

The children were warned. The parents were. And, and there, what you have is you had a culture where people were raping their children at, you know, as young as four or five years old.

01:26:02

So we have to kill them to stop that. Well, that was God's judgment. Remember, where did this come from?

01:26:08

This wasn't a, this wasn't a decision that the Israelites made. This came from the creator who is, who is using using

01:26:14

Israel to bring out justice just as much as when he used Babylon to bring justice to Israel.

01:26:22

Or it was a human culture with their relative cultural morality doing what humans do sometimes.

01:26:28

And then saying, God says it's okay. And writing that down in their books. God told us it was okay.

01:26:35

Well, I would, I would say that the issue there is you, you also see where the example of the

01:26:40

Babylonians, it was prophesied before that Babylonians came in and that the

01:26:45

Babylonians would do that same justice on Israel because they deserved it. So I think,

01:26:51

I think that when we look at it from the perspective of we're looking at a human perspective versus divine, but I think, and see now

01:26:59

I'm being bad to John because I took over his question. I think we went a different way. So to, to, to answer, to answer your question within the culture of the ancient

01:27:08

Israelites, when they did that to those women, it was okay. I can't say it was objectively wrong because it was, it was okay.

01:27:17

And I, that's why I don't take issue with slavery in the Bible either. Slavery at the time was okay within that culture.

01:27:24

I don't, I don't have a problem with that. Now in my, in my culture, you know, and a lot of atheists will criticize that part of the

01:27:31

Bible. You have slavery in your Bible and they, they try to hold that against you. I don't because I recognize that within that culture at that time, that was moral.

01:27:41

Well, I would argue that in the Bible, it wasn't moral with the way some carried it out.

01:27:48

But slavery in the Bible is different than what most think of slavery because they, people were not possession war.

01:27:54

Yeah. There was there, you had the case where people got paid. Those that didn't get paid.

01:28:00

It was, there was choice in that. They made the choice to be in a slave for life so they could give up that.

01:28:09

But what you end up seeing in that is that it was, it was an economic system where the master had a responsibility to care for people.

01:28:16

So it's, it was very different. You couldn't kidnap. That would, that would be wrong.

01:28:22

So it's not often, and you weren't, you came in late, but I was actually using that as an example of what we end up seeing as arguments against that atheists make against Christianity.

01:28:32

And I think that it's, it's a bad one because it's a fallacy of equivocation. We're taking the slavery or we're, we think of in America and apply it a better example of the slavery that's in the

01:28:43

Bible would be 1980s Japan, where you worked for a company, they owned everything.

01:28:51

They, but they had a responsibility to care for you. They own your clothes. They own your house. They own your car. They provide all the schooling and education for the family.

01:28:59

And people don't just pick up and switch jobs. You worked for a company. You worked for that company. Your whole family worked for that company for generations would be the plan.

01:29:08

And that, that would basically the thinking that they had in Japan is that would cause people to work harder for the company, make the company better so that people can, could, you know, basically live better themselves.

01:29:23

But that's really more analogous to what we see in the slavery of the Bible. But that's aside.

01:29:30

So back to, I guess where John's question was with the absolute morality with the rape. The reason

01:29:35

I asked the question, the way I do, you know, like John asked

01:29:41

Matt's question and Matt asks us all time. And I think, I think that the way

01:29:47

Matt asks that there's just too many variables in, in the question, because you don't get to a real dichotomy, but the point

01:29:55

Matt's trying to get to in it is, you know, is it okay to, to murder a child just for fun, just because you feel like it, right?

01:30:06

And when, when you say now you're, you you're given the caveat, you're not, but would you say that it's okay, that rape because you think it's wrong, but someone that's actually raping a woman because she, he doesn't think it's wrong.

01:30:22

Does that make it right? I need more context than that.

01:30:27

Where, when, where, and how has this happened? Is rape the act of rape, not the consequences of rape, but the act of rape, is it always wrong?

01:30:43

I mean, I'm not trying to say this is a loaded question. I don't, no,

01:30:48

I don't think, I don't think, look, I'm not trying to trick you. And I don't think you're trying to be, I think you're being honest. And, and this is, you know, for, for folks that are listening, watching,

01:30:57

I mean, the thing that I want people to recognize is yeah, you get a lot of atheists that don't want to sit there and you know, and, and they just want to challenge people.

01:31:11

But, uh, the reality is what you end up seeing is, you know, you're not doing that,

01:31:17

Jeff. I mean, you're trying to honestly answer and I respect that. I hope others will respect that as well. There, there is no objective, absolute morality in the universe that says rape is always wrong.

01:31:32

There just isn't. Now, if I see someone raping someone else, I'm going to stop them.

01:31:38

And because it's, it's wrong, you know, within my cultural framework and that's all

01:31:44

I need. I don't need anything other than that to, to, to have, you know, righteous indignation and want justice against people who rape.

01:31:54

But the problem is that tomorrow that culture can change. What are you going to do then? Okay. No, the, the, the culture might give me an example of a culture changing.

01:32:07

Oh, sure. I'll give you a clear one. Uh, just a few generations, like not even a generation ago, uh, same sex marriage was wrong.

01:32:18

Homosexuality was a generation ago was illegal and now it's not. So should we, if the culture, if the culture defines it, right.

01:32:27

Right. Minority of people that are affecting and changing something for the entire culture.

01:32:35

So therefore, I mean, abortion is, is seen as it was, it was a minority view, homosexuality, a minority view.

01:32:44

So yet we're making laws to make that right in the culture.

01:32:49

Okay. Um, let me, let me ask a clarifying question here. Um, China and Saudi Arabia have different cultures and different moralities in some senses.

01:33:00

Yes or no? Uh, in some sense. Yeah. I mean, that gets back to, so there's certain things that we all know every, every human being knows is wrong.

01:33:10

And that's when, when I think I speak of like this absolute morality, that's universal.

01:33:16

It's things like lying, stealing, murder, things that God has said is universally wrong for all people.

01:33:25

Not speaking of things like, um, that are, that would be, you know, with, whether you can have alcohol or not,

01:33:32

Saudi Arabia, you can't drink alcohol. America, you can. Right. And that's the time you couldn't.

01:33:39

We can differentiate that by malum in se and malum prohibitum. Okay. In legal terms.

01:33:47

Okay. I asked that question to say this, um, um, whatever is the cultural moral changes happening in China, isn't my culture.

01:33:57

So I'm not going to change with the Chinese culture. And, and even here in the

01:34:02

United States, there are different cultures. And, and my moral framework is the culture that I was raised with, you know, here in the

01:34:11

South, in the seventies, eighties, early nineties. And that's, that's pretty well solidified in me.

01:34:17

So to answer John's question, if, if American culture changes, I'm not likely to change with it because I've already got my culture programmed into me.

01:34:28

But does it still make it right or wrong? I would say it's wrong. The, I would,

01:34:36

I would, I would think that the, um, the changes would be wrong in my point of view.

01:34:42

Okay. Let me ask a question that Jason Manning had asked earlier and I put it up. He said, if, if there's no objective wrong, then why is

01:34:51

Jeff giving example of that's wrong giving, giving examples of morality?

01:34:57

Uh, where was the, I clicked on the wrong one. Oh, here it was. Question for Jeff. Uh, was it objectively wrong for the

01:35:04

Israelites to kill the Amalekites? No, no, it wasn't.

01:35:11

Okay. Well, okay. Then I would say this, the reason why you can't answer that it was objective wrongs, because you don't have an objective morality.

01:35:25

Correct. Think about that. You don't have an objective morality.

01:35:36

I mean, no, I would say not. I mean, for a

01:35:42

Christian worldview, we, we definitely have an objective morality. Our morality comes from God outside.

01:35:49

You might, you might think that you might sincerely believe that. I'm not going to call you a liar, but I, I would just say you're, you're mistaken about that.

01:35:58

Your, your morality is the same cultural subjective morality that everyone else has. You just think it's objective.

01:36:06

Well, how, how can you speak for, for me to say what I, what

01:36:12

I know? I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not speaking for you. I'm just describing,

01:36:18

I'm just my, my point of view, looking at. Yeah, you're right. Okay. And yet atheists get really upset when we say that God, I mean, everybody knows that God exists.

01:36:28

Cause you're like, you're putting, you're forcing your worldview on us now.

01:36:34

You're saying that because I don't know if you, if you think you're doing that is how I'm perceiving it.

01:36:40

At least you're saying that we can't know. And yet we're saying we, we can.

01:36:45

And in fact, we're saying that God would say you know, because God knows you better than yourself.

01:36:52

And he would, he would say that you're suppressing that in unrighteousness, but, or I mean, don't you see that you're, you're doing it.

01:37:00

You're putting your worldview onto us. You're applying your worldview to us saying what we can and can't know. Well, I mean, we're, we're, we're both describing each other's position from our own point of view.

01:37:11

You, you just said that, you know, my, I'm suppressing truth of objective morality and stuff.

01:37:18

That's, that's you looking at my situation through the lens of your worldview. And I'm doing the same.

01:37:24

I'm not, I'm not trying to enforce my worldview and demand that you follow my worldview.

01:37:29

Well, I, I qualified it. I said, according from God's view, not my view. Right. So, so I, you know, there's, there was that qualification for purpose because the fact is, is

01:37:42

I, I can't, you know, understand what goes on in your mind. I can't read your mind.

01:37:48

I can't say that absolutely. This is what you know and don't know, but God who knows all of us who created us can know that.

01:37:55

So when he says that, it'd be different. So no, that's, that's still just, that's still just Andrew Rappaport talking.

01:38:05

No, that's, it's God talking in his word. That's something you read in a book that you believe that you're saying.

01:38:15

And supported by the fact that we couldn't know right from wrong without God. I believe we can know right and wrong without God.

01:38:25

But it's, but it's subjective, so that can change. It can, it does change, you know, gradually over time, cultures evolve.

01:38:32

Go to Israel right now and try to find Israelites who are, you know, capturing people and raping them and keeping virgins.

01:38:38

You won't find that because their culture has changed since then. The morality has evolved since then.

01:38:44

See, but this is, and this is what I, I'm struggling with is we keep going back to this.

01:38:52

It's a, I want to say it's a bait and switch that, and I don't, I'm not saying you're doing a bait and switch.

01:38:58

I think you're falling for a bait and switch. It's two different issues. When you want to talk about the cultural morality, which

01:39:06

I'm agreeing, there is a subjective thing of what we say is right for Americans. That's going to be different for, for Chinese and, and it is by force realistically.

01:39:20

So you're going to have that. That's a, you know, you could argue culturally, but that's not what, when we talk about an absolute morality, that's not what we're talking about.

01:39:29

Let me try to meet you halfway. Let me rephrase something here and try to meet you halfway.

01:39:37

The, the biological instinct that I'm talking about is effectively objective and, and absolute.

01:39:45

It doesn't change very much at all. That, that biological instinct component of, of our, our instinct for morality, that's objective.

01:39:56

That doesn't change. And where does that instinct come from? It evolves over time, over millions of years, being a social species.

01:40:04

Like you said, the, the penguin that doesn't cooperate freezes and dies and his genes leave the gene pool.

01:40:10

Yeah, but, but, but that's, you haven't, that's a claim without support, right?

01:40:16

You, you, because we don't see the animals like the penguins coming up with any other, if you want to say rules, they, they're not coming up with any others.

01:40:27

This is, those are the only ones that they, that they've, that has ever been observed, right?

01:40:32

They don't need to come up with rules because the instinct is enough to, to accomplish what needs to be accomplished.

01:40:38

But the instinct you're, I see you begging the question and, and I see you doing the same gymnastics you would accuse

01:40:46

Christians of doing. And that's the thing, like you're, you're making a statement without any evidence that we can get this instinct, right?

01:40:59

I'm asking where the instinct come from. So that, that's really the, you're, you have to prove that it can come from biological matter.

01:41:08

Well, you agree that these animals do have an instinct to cooperate with each other. As an instinct, yes, they can do, they can do no other.

01:41:21

Okay. Then that's my only point there. That's different than what, when we talk about morality, because if, if that was the case, we would do no other, we would, we would never lie or we'd always lie.

01:41:33

We, we couldn't choose to lie. That's a distinction. There's more to it than just the instinct, but I need to establish that instinct does exist though.

01:41:47

But the, that instinct, the question is, is that instinct the morality we're talking about? I would say no.

01:41:53

I would say it's part of it. Okay. And, and this is the thing is that you're, when we went to the example with me calling you

01:42:03

Steve, right, right. Your question, which was the excellent one and the one that needs to be is it's, we have to have a same standard.

01:42:12

This is the thing that I think for me, when I speak to people that profess to be atheists, it's frustrating because there's not that standard.

01:42:23

When we say morality, we have different meanings for morality. Right? So when we say an absolute standard of morality, what

01:42:31

I find is that you understand, I think what we mean by it, but then you jump, you keep jumping to something we don't mean by it.

01:42:39

And that's where it, it almost becomes a little frustrating because I know from listening to you,

01:42:45

I know that, you know, this distinction, but yet you keep going back to, you know, the fallacy of equivocation of, of using it two different ways.

01:42:55

So, I mean, what, what, what word, what word am I using two different ways? Well, when you speak of morality, you keep going back to this cultural laws that we can come up with.

01:43:06

Right. And then you're, you're using that when we're talking about this absolute morality, that's inbred in every human being where they know right from wrong and, and can choose to do wrong.

01:43:17

And they get a guilt, guilty feeling when they do that, that they know that it's wrong. Right. I would,

01:43:24

I would argue animals don't have a guilty feeling. They do what they do by instinct. It's not a choice that they make.

01:43:34

Okay. And that's because God made them without, not in the image of, of himself.

01:43:40

They don't have the attributes of personality and morality that he gives to human beings.

01:43:48

Okay. Now you'd, you'd say that's biological, but where's the evidence for that?

01:43:55

The evidence that is biological is, is simply the fact that they, I mean, either we agree that they, these animals do cooperate with each other.

01:44:10

So it's that, that's either biological or it's something else. I mean, how do you, how do you explain animals cooperating with each other?

01:44:17

If it's not biological instinct? Oh, I would say with the animals, it is biological instinct. And that's why they can't choose.

01:44:23

We can choose. So there, there is an instinct for cooperation in animals. In some animals.

01:44:29

God, I would say has given them this instinct. And, and, and, and we are animals.

01:44:35

No, we're not. I mean, I mean, of course you believe we are more than just animals, but we are also animals, biologically speaking.

01:44:45

If you're going to put it into a taxonomy that they have, then, you know, I understand where you're going with that.

01:44:50

I'm not going to, I'm not agreeing with it because I don't think we were, we are created in the same way or created separate from animals.

01:44:59

We are distinct in that way because we're made in the image of God, because we have an ability to make choices, to have an ability to reason.

01:45:08

I just thought of something I was going to ask you and it escaped me. So maybe when, if I remember this again,

01:45:14

I'll, I'll ask you when I think of it. Do you, do you think that humans have any biological instincts, biochemical instincts like animals do?

01:45:24

Oh, I think that there are some things that we would, I mean, you look at a baby when it, as soon as it's out of the womb, it knows to have that sucking, you know, to, to get food.

01:45:38

I would say that's an instinct. Yeah. Okay. So humans do have some animal instincts.

01:45:44

Have instincts. Okay. Well, instincts in common with animals, other animals.

01:45:50

I mean, we, we, we, we have bones and organs and blood and hair and teeth just like we're animals.

01:45:57

It's, I guess, and I'm, and I'm not trying to, we're, I think, I think what both of us are trying to do, you could correct me if I'm wrong.

01:46:05

We're trying to be very precise in our wording and yet try and find where we can find agreement in, in using the terminology.

01:46:13

Yes. Yes, I agree. So, you know, I just, I don't want people to think that you're trying to play word games or I'm trying to play word games.

01:46:21

I don't think you are and I'm not. So I just want people to see, to understand that because I know that some people won't see that, you know, people on your side will say,

01:46:33

I'm playing word games for you on my side. I would say you're playing word games. I don't think either one of us are. No, I don't see that either. Yeah.

01:46:40

But I think we're trying to be precise and I think we're trying to be clear so we could, because we need the common ground to be able to have the, the standard of agreement.

01:46:49

Right. Exactly. But the thing, when we speak of the morality, I would say animals don't.

01:47:00

Okay. We can choose to lie or not to lie. And I know

01:47:06

I don't have, there's no way for me to share this, you know, over audio, over a podcast right now, but there, there have been experiments that show that chimpanzees also experienced that they, they, they, they have a self -awareness of truth and deception and lying and, and all of that as well.

01:47:26

Yeah. I've seen some of the studies. I've never been convinced only because, and it's not that,

01:47:33

Oh, you got to know. It's I, again, I, I see what I often see is the, the confirmation bias.

01:47:39

It's assumed and therefore they're looking for something and they, they, they find things go,

01:47:44

Oh, look, see here, this is proof. You know, if it's biochemical, we'd have to produce it chemically and show the chemicals that are producing this.

01:47:56

Well, that's a testable hypothesis. You know, we, we, we can, and perhaps it's already been done.

01:48:01

I don't know, but we can, you know, test for that and falsify that and, and demonstrate that scientifically.

01:48:09

Yeah. So, okay. Let me, I'm going to John, did you have anything else? No, I don't want to waste any more time.

01:48:16

So yeah, go ahead and get the next person on. Okay. I'm glad that John admitted he's a waste of time.

01:48:21

Thank you. I couldn't help it. All right. I'll bring Andrew in. We got about 10 minutes left and, and, and I'm not, if atheists came in here,

01:48:31

Jeff, I would bring them in as well. They didn't come in. It's not that we're trying to get a bunch of Christians and team on you.

01:48:37

That's not, I would rather talk to Christians. Yeah. I mean, I just want people to think, cause I, I, I've been doing this long enough.

01:48:43

I know the arguments. I know the things that are going to come out on in the comments by next week is,

01:48:49

Oh, Andrew is trying to get the Christian to gang up on him. Go for it. I get bored. Yes.

01:48:54

I mean, I get, I get bored talking to atheists. Yeah. I mean, they could have come in. I've, I've been inviting them in. So Andrew, he's

01:49:00

Andrew is from down under. So if he sounds a little funny, if you need translation, Jeff, we could try to do that.

01:49:08

I typed the question anyway. And this is the problem that I've come up with and atheists throw it at me very regularly.

01:49:18

And I don't really have a good response for it. I'm not looking for a good response for it, but I just thought

01:49:25

I'd ask you, Adam and Eve is a myth. Where's the scientific evidence you would call for that?

01:49:33

The scientific evidence that Adam and Eve is a myth. Yeah. Okay. Um, I would,

01:49:40

I would point to the fossil record where we have human ancestry and large population numbers going back to a point where we have creatures that might not even qualify as, as modern

01:49:54

Homo sapiens anymore. So there's never a point where you only have two of them.

01:50:02

I mean, we, we, we do speak of mitochondria Adam and mitochondria

01:50:07

Eve, because there has to be a point. And, and I, I mean, I would challenge you with what you said on fossil record, because I'm, I'm in almost every one of the supposed transitional forms that we've seen have been proven to be either chimpanzees or humans.

01:50:25

I always love that. I forget the one where the discovery channel where the guy came to the conclusion that the vertebrae or not the vertebrae, the pelvis would have been in a different thing.

01:50:35

So he broke it, dremels it down, glues it back together and goes, this is the proper way. And he doesn't even realize what he's doing.

01:50:41

He's the fossils didn't support his claim or, you know, you have

01:50:46

Lucy where the arguments that are made for Lucy being a missing link are all on the bones.

01:50:52

We don't actually have like the pelvis and the, the feet. And so I would challenge you on that, but there has to be, if evolution was true, there had to be a time whether it was humans or something else, but you had to have a time where something suddenly became male and female and they had all of the, you know, the, the, the organs and everything to be able to meet as male and female as separate from one another.

01:51:25

And they had to not only have the, have that evolve at that time, they had to evolve in the same place and the same time in history.

01:51:33

Cause if one becomes male and there's no female, he dies off. And, and there's no more males if you same with the female.

01:51:39

So you have to have male and female at the same time in the same place. And they'd have to know what to do with those organs.

01:51:46

Okay. So how, how then do you explain, you know, the, the, the whole world of the scientific

01:51:52

Academy and people who've studied this, you know, their whole careers and who are, you know, top notch scientists all believing that that's plausible.

01:52:00

How do you explain that? Are they, is it a conspiracy theory? No, no, it's, it's, it's really simple.

01:52:06

I mean, it's, that's a fallacy of popular of popular. Okay. Just because many scientists believe it doesn't make it true.

01:52:12

But what is true is that if you don't accept that you don't have a job in science, if you don't accept that you won't get peer reviewed.

01:52:20

So that right there is going to limit. I mean, I know plenty of Christians that believe in a young earth, but they, they, they can't say that when they teach at Brown university.

01:52:30

Why? Because there'll be fired. Well, that's, that's really simple. It's not that it's a conspiracy.

01:52:36

It's called, it's called censorship. That's all. And they do have their own separate journals into which their peer reviewed.

01:52:43

So yeah, there's this separation between those two.

01:52:50

It's possible. And there are many other, I can't think of his name,

01:52:57

John Polkinghorne. After many years of atheism came back and is now in,

01:53:04

I think he's in the Anglican church of the UK. There are, you know, if you want to read that John Lennox mentions many in his books.

01:53:18

For the scientific evidence of Christians and people who were atheists.

01:53:29

Well, that's, I mean, that at best that's, that's anecdotal and that's, that's valid for those people.

01:53:35

I mean, anecdotal evidence is always valid to the person who has the evidence, who has that experience, but just because someone changes their mind doesn't change the facts on the ground.

01:53:46

Yeah. And, and, and censoring the facts on the ground doesn't make the opposing view true.

01:53:52

In fact, I would argue when you have to appeal to censorship, then it's probably because you have a losing argument.

01:54:00

Well, he begins because I'll, I'll, I'll, I don't want to cut across to be too rude, but he looks at the atheists who have their view and have stuck to their view for many years.

01:54:13

And then he deliberately lists these people to balance up the record to say,

01:54:21

Hey, I'm not just arguing for the atheists. I also want to say these people are Christians as well, and they are also there, but varying degrees of them, they're old earth, they're young earth, they're a bunch of other sub views within Christianity.

01:54:39

I don't think I quite understand what you're getting at there. Let me try and explain.

01:54:47

Sorry, I had to agree with Jeff on that one. Sorry, Andrew. I don't know where I'm going.

01:54:54

I'm just thinking. Maybe, maybe it was a, it got lost in translation there. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Maybe you have to go and read the book.

01:55:02

I mean, I can't even remember which book I read it in. It might be, it might be her science buried

01:55:07

God or it might be one of his others. Okay. Yeah. And do you have any other, any other questions or.

01:55:17

No, that's it. I just wanted to know, and I wanted to see the evidence and well, I'm just not convinced.

01:55:23

I'm still convinced there's no money. Yeah. Okay. Let me, let me, let me recommend one last thing for Andrew there.

01:55:29

Go to, go to YouTube and just search for Kent Hovind versus and let it auto fill in a name there and just, just watch any random debate.

01:55:40

Well, yeah. That's that. That's like saying,

01:55:46

I mean, Okay. Yeah. I have to be careful. So I'm, I'm, I'm friends with Ken's son.

01:55:54

So I don't want to be disrespectful to his father, but I wouldn't use Ken Hovind as a good example.

01:56:02

I actually see some of what Kent says, but I actually go more for the Hugh Ross field.

01:56:08

Yeah. I think, I think they put it this way and Andrew, thanks.

01:56:16

Thanks for coming in late. Cause we only have a couple of minutes. So I'll just, I just wanted to ask that question. I just wanted to have some kind of deal with it, but yep.

01:56:23

Thanks. And feel, feel free to tag me in the Facebook group if you want to ask me more questions about that.

01:56:29

Yeah. And, and so you're speaking to the politics live Facebook group. Yes. For folks who don't know on Facebook, we have a group apologetics live and you could go there and check that out.

01:56:39

And Jeff is in there. You're also, I think in striving fraternity group. Yes. So you're there as well, which

01:56:47

I was always curious. He came in and the questions for answering the questions, you said you had a question about podcasting and I've never seen that question pop up, but, but the yeah, what

01:56:58

I was saying with Ken Hovind is, I mean, I, I just, I think the, the reason I don't,

01:57:04

I don't particularly, I, he could, he says things that are true, but I think that there's times where he just, he will just do the same thing.

01:57:13

I think that many, many who profess atheism would that I see do they believe it and in their mind that makes it true.

01:57:21

And so they can't reason their way to the truth. It's just, this is, this is the truth and you have to accept it.

01:57:28

I just don't think that's a good way to debate. I would much prefer what you and I are doing in trying to come to common ground.

01:57:36

So we know our terms we're trying to, and you can't always get done in one conversation.

01:57:42

But because we do have a lot that we bring into a lot of presuppositions we bring into this. So I agree.

01:57:49

It's not something that was just like, Oh, boom, one shot. We can get this done. So I do, I appreciate you coming in,

01:57:54

Jeff. I think it was helpful. I think that I think that this is, if for nothing else, it might be good for both those that like to debate online, both

01:58:05

Christians and atheists, that we can see that this can be done in a, in a cordial way.

01:58:10

There was no name calling you. I was just waiting for you to say yes.

01:58:19

So I could say that. No, but I mean, I, you know, but so let me, before we close out, let me give you a chance to give any closing comments you have before I close out the show.

01:58:30

That's it. If anybody has any questions, can come find me in the Facebook groups that Andrew mentioned, and I'm happy to come back next week or any week.

01:58:38

Yeah. Well, it's on most, most nights we do an open Q and a. So anytime you want to come on in you know,

01:58:45

I wanted to give you this week. I want, I said, I want to give you more time. So I wanted to really give us most of the time for the, for the discussion.

01:58:55

And and then, and that way, you know, we'd be able to have a more lengthy discussion, but if you ever want to come in and, you know, ask some questions that that's, you know, that's good.

01:59:07

And we're here to try to answer them. Can't promise that I have always have an answer, but I could try.

01:59:13

Sure. So thanks for coming in. Appreciate it. Let me close out, give you guys some things.

01:59:20

I know traditional Catholic just came in and there's no time for him, but I, I would love for him to take a look at what was sent to me about the argument that there's outside the

01:59:29

Catholic church. There's absolutely no salvation. Yep. That's the proper Catholic view.

01:59:35

So, but for folks who mentioned earlier, I want to join us going to Israel 2021

01:59:42

Israel trip .com. You can get the details there. And again, I'm asking everyone if they could go and to our new

01:59:49

YouTube channel and subscribe today, we're going to probably, if not next week, the week after probably move this show off of carm videos and onto the strive at new striving for eternity channel.

02:00:02

So you can get there just by going to bit .ly .com that's B I T L Y .com.

02:00:08

Slash Y T S F E. That stands for you tube striving for eternity.

02:00:15

So just go to bit .ly .com slash Y T S F E. And that'll bring you right to the new channel that we're setting up.

02:00:22

I'm moving all the videos over so that they'll be there and we'll be moving all the apologetics lives over there as well.

02:00:29

So we have one place. So if you go there and subscribe, that would be wonderful because we'll start moving there.

02:00:36

So you can, if you go to apologetics live .com, that should always bring you to the watch page, the video page, and you can always watch it from there.

02:00:48

But that page itself may also move because I don't, I just, we don't want to karma is going to be going through a whole new website and by moving it off for a while may save it from having any problems in the, the sites being moved and stuff.

02:01:02

I just don't want to have any kind of, any conflicts with that. So for that,

02:01:07

I appreciate John Jeff coming in John and Andrew asking their questions next week.

02:01:13

We're, we're going to be doing some open Q and A's. If there's folks who want to set up some debates, we got a debate that we're lining up between I don't actually know the two people

02:01:23

I know can cook and Lutheran. They're going to debate baptism, Lutheran baptism and whether baptism saves.

02:01:30

So that debate will be coming up. I won't be debating the Jewish guy on rabbinical

02:01:37

Judaism unless he contacts me. So please, if you are listening, the individual who sent the email, please,

02:01:46

I have tried to leave my message on your pager. I have tried to email you.

02:01:52

But if you want to set that up, we would have to actually do that. I will be doing a debate

02:01:58

September. I think it's 28th. I'll have to check the dates. But with the gospel truth

02:02:05

I will be debating someone and the prep proposition that he chose is he wants to debate that secular humanism is better than Christianity.

02:02:17

So that will be the debate. I will probably if I get permission, we'll see.

02:02:23

But if I get permission, I'll probably play that here on this channel for us after that debate.

02:02:31

So I appreciate everyone coming in and do go out. I will remind folks to go to strivingforeternity .org

02:02:39

slash donate. If you want to help support this show. We would love to have you guys be able to support us so we could do more things like this.

02:02:48

We try to put this on. We don't make a big deal about money and things like that, but it does cost money to build platforms that use this technology.

02:02:59

We got to pay for some of the technology. And so to be able to use these platforms that we use, it costs.

02:03:06

YouTube got rid of Hangouts. So well, now you can't use that anymore. So we would appreciate anything you could do.

02:03:13

Go to strivingforeternity .org slash donate and any amount. There's a list of things you will get as gifts that are on there.

02:03:21

So we appreciate it. I will mention we are trying to get a trip together to go to Japan to train up some churches for the 2020

02:03:29

Olympics. And so if folks are interested in helping us out with that, you could donate their strivingforeternity .org

02:03:36

slash donate till next week. Remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.