Why Do Atheists Love to Debate God?

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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June 4, 2025

00:03: Welcome to the Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.
00:09: This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
00:18: Welcome to another edition of the Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the
00:27: Christian life. We are part of the Christian podcast community and hope that you will check out the different podcasts there.
00:36: Now, this episode, as I'm just getting back from travel, I wanted to put up one more backlog episode where I was on someone else's podcast, and this is the
00:45: Bold Apology Podcast with my friend Adam. There is a lot of discussion in here because if you do any kind of apologetics, you see all these professing atheists that all they want to do is talk about Christianity.
01:00: They don't actually talk that much about atheism, and so Adam and I had a discussion on why do atheists spend the time talking so much about God?
01:10: It's an interesting phenomenon. If they really believe He doesn't exist, you'd think they wouldn't waste their time?
01:16: Hmm. So coming to you right now is the episode on Bold Apologia where we were discussing why do atheists spend so much time talking about God.
01:30: You're listening to the Bold Apologia podcast. Here you can expect to find real conversation and dialogue centralized around the purpose for sharing the hope of Jesus Christ in light of theology, apologetics, and culture.
01:41: We hope and believe this episode will add confidence to your faith by equipping you with boldness to share the good news of the gospel.
01:48: And now, your host, Adam Parker. Well, hello there
01:59: Bold Apologia podcast listeners. It is great to be back on the
02:04: Bold Apologia podcast, and I am excited about the general theme of what this podcast will be on.
02:12: It's kind of a mystery to many of us who are Christians. Why do atheists spend so much time refuting a
02:22: God they don't believe in? I tell you what, I've had a lot of interesting conversations over the years with people who identify as atheists.
02:34: And again, maybe tongue -in -cheek with the title and things like that, just that they just they seem to spend so much time trying to refute
02:47: God despite not even believing. And it kind of comes off as a little bit of a paradox or a mystery to me as well as many others.
03:00: And so I have invited Andrew Rappaport, who is the founder of Striving for Eternity, and who also is one of the founders for the
03:11: Christian podcast community of which this podcast is part of. And so with that said,
03:17: I would like to just go ahead and add him to the stage.
03:23: Hey there, Andrew. Really nice to have you on the podcast. And anything you want to say before we move forward?
03:31: Yeah, well, thanks for having me. And yes, you are a member of the Christian podcast community, and I know you waited for your very first episode with us to talk and tackle the topic of addressing cessationism.
03:45: You just figured right out of the bat, take the one thing that you and I disagree on. Let's let's hit it head on. I love it.
03:51: Yeah, I just figured I'd stir the pot a little bit. Actually, speaking of which, before we go any further,
03:58: I do want to add to the stage this. For those of you who are...
04:05: Who's that good -looking guy there? That's me, but I think it's highly edited, highly edited.
04:11: But I just wanted to share with those of you who are listening, I do have a blog, and it's
04:17: BoldApologia .com, and I shared a new post.
04:23: And essentially, it is centered around the idea of being slain in the Spirit. Is it biblical?
04:30: And I have subtitled it as a defense of God's power and presence.
04:37: And so, as you can see, I'll kind of scroll through. It's pretty in depth.
04:44: I go through quite a few different instances in Scripture where I think we can see people impacted or encumbered by the presence of God.
04:56: And you'll find in the article itself, I don't like the term slain in the Spirit. I think it is unhelpful.
05:04: But I take a look at some of just the revivals in the past. I take a look at some of those.
05:10: John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, pull some from the Azusa Street revival.
05:16: I take a look at some of the thoughts of the early church fathers, Martin Luther, Augustine, got
05:25: Tertullian there, John Calvin even. And what's really important is drawing it back to what the scriptures teach.
05:35: So it's pretty in depth. I would not say this is a scholarly article by any means.
05:43: I'm not claiming to be a scholar. This is more from kind of a pastoral tone, you know, just giving an explanation of what you may see if you run into people being slain in the
05:55: Spirit. And actually, what's an important part of this article is toward the end,
06:02: I have some cautions and some tips for pastors who are shepherding people through these kind of things, tying it all together, and then concluding.
06:10: So I think that this is a good article for anybody who particularly is not hostile to the charismatic perspective on being slain in the
06:24: Spirit. And actually, I try to be a little more charitable. I say continuationists. People seem really thrown off by Pentecostal.
06:32: Then there's charismatic. But continuationist seems to be the politically correct way of throwing it out there for our cessationist brothers.
06:42: And so anyway, sorry about that, Andrew. Got more charismatic stuff to throw at you.
06:47: So where can people find this article? You can find this article on BoldApologia .com.
06:53: It's where my blog post is. And it's, like I said, not seen as this is a scholarly article.
07:03: It's just me sharing my thoughts and just giving some explanations, giving a defense of it.
07:12: So don't try to, you know, use this as a source in like a college paper or something.
07:19: It was a really long article for what would take me just one word to answer. Yeah. No.
07:25: Yeah, of course. Of course. Well, it's, yeah, it's about a 45 minute read.
07:32: If you want to sit and read it in the full sitting, go ahead. Otherwise, you can take your time or you can, you
07:55: I'm on the theist side and Andrew's on the atheist side. No, no, no. I'm on the biblical side.
08:02: And you're on the continuationist side. But, you know, I'm on the biblical side and he's on the cessationist side.
08:09: Yeah. So, so I'm on the sola scriptura side. But yeah, except for the fact that it says they'll cease.
08:16: What Andrew and I do agree on is, is the issue of, is there a
08:23: God? We both believe in Jesus. He is the way, the truth and the life.
08:29: No one comes to the Father except through him. And what I love about Andrew is he's a perfect guest to have on for a show such as this, because what this comes down to and what
08:48: I really like about what Jay Seegert said on my last podcast, not this previous one where it was just me sharing a sermon
08:57: I did, but my podcast before that, that specifically looked at the issue of faith and science and are they really incompatible?
09:06: What he said was that at the core of all of this is a heart issue.
09:13: And immediately that brought me back to some past conversations I've had with Andrew here regarding presuppositional apologetics.
09:22: This is a question that is perfect for a presuppositional apologist to really weigh in on.
09:31: And I've had Andrew on in the past. He was part of a podcast we did on this, just the different methodologies of Christian apologetics.
09:43: So, we had classical apologetics, we had presuppositional, which Andrew represented, we had evidential, and we had cumulative case for apologetics.
09:55: And so, with that said, I would like to, Andrew, open it up for you to speak exactly to what we're talking about here.
10:05: And I may interject, I actually have some fun comments I want to read to you that you can react to.
10:11: I like to stir the pot a little bit. Yeah, well, let me start just by saying what we were joking about earlier.
10:19: Folks that, you know, continuationists, cessationists, there are people who get very emotional about these things, as if you're questioning someone's salvation, if you disagree with them.
10:32: And I think that's why people have such hard views over them. And I would hope that folks would see between Adam and I that though we disagree, and I think we disagree strongly, that'd probably be a fair statement.
10:46: And yet we can be of good spirit, we can have a good relationship, we can joke around, you know, so we can have our differences.
10:57: You know, one of us is going to be wrong, both of us could be wrong. We'll know when we get to heaven, but we both can't be right.
11:05: And so, you know, but we try to do what we think is faithful to our study of the Word of God.
11:11: You know, Adam will realize he is wrong for his time on earth, but that's fine. That's fine. But yeah, we ended up doing what you just referred to with the episode that we did on the different views of how to do apologetics.
11:28: I actually jumped off of that and had you on my show, my Apologetics Live show, and we spent two hours on each one to get, because it really, when you, we did two hours with you, and it just, we could, it was, could not get in depth enough.
11:42: No, couldn't. Because of the fact that we had four different views represented. And so,
11:48: I just thought we need more time with each one. And I thought that was really good and healthy. And that, again, gets to the fact of, we should be able to disagree with our brothers in Christ, and know where our disagreements are, and still be willing to hear one another out.
12:05: Yeah, that's different than when we have an atheist, just saying. Right. So, yeah, you raised a really good and interesting question.
12:14: Atheists spend so much of their time studying a God they don't believe in.
12:21: And it's, it's very, just very interesting, because I was on a show two days ago, an atheist, two atheists, they wanted to talk
12:28: Christianity. And it's interesting, because at least these guys were kind of honest, because I always ask people, what's their best argument for atheism?
12:38: And all they do is attack Christianity. And I point, you know, that's not actually an argument for atheism.
12:47: That's an argument against Christianity. And these guys were like, well, yeah. And they tried to explain it away going, you can't really prove you're, you know, you can't give an argument for something you're against.
12:58: I'm like, yeah, I can, you know, I'm against abortion, I can give an argument for it.
13:03: You know, you know, I can give an argument why leprechauns don't exist.
13:10: Right? I can do that. I don't believe they exist, I can give an argument, but but for some reason, they can't give an argument for what they believe.
13:18: And though these guys didn't fall into my trap that I laid for so many, they were the first ones to ever have this.
13:25: But I always like to ask atheists, if they if they study atheism, like, do you watch
13:31: YouTube channels about atheism? Do you read books about atheism? And mostly what it is, it's not about atheism.
13:39: It's against Christianity. And it's not against like religion, they say they're against religion, but the religion they talk about is
13:46: Christianity. Sam Harris had a book where he he, it was just really interesting, because his examples of why religion was bad was all examples from Mormonism, sorry, from Muslims.
14:01: Okay. Extreme Islam is what he you know, so, so there, he's saying all religions bad, but there, he's defining it as extreme
14:09: Islam. So it's by in his own words, it wasn't what he would call normal Islam.
14:16: Right? But then he's taking that and saying, well, Christians are bad. And it's like, but Christians aren't the ones doing these things you're criticizing, right?
14:26: So, but usually what I'll do is I'll ask them how, you know, they read books on atheism.
14:31: Do they do watch YouTube videos and things on atheism? They'll say yes, hours and hours.
14:40: And I'll ask, why? I mean, if you don't believe God exists, why would you study it?
14:45: And they always say so that I have an answer. So because, you know, because, you know, you, you people are brainwashing trying to brainwash people into believing someone that is a
14:55: God that doesn't exist to which I always ask them, do you believe Santa Claus is real?
15:01: And they'll say no. And I go, well, do you go to the mall every December and yell out loud?
15:07: You know, Santa isn't real. Santa isn't real. Why don't you do that? And the answer I almost always get is because everyone knows he isn't real.
15:17: And I just pause for silence, let that sink in and go, correct. You know,
15:22: God exists. What Romans one says, you suppress that in unrighteousness. That's why you're sitting here trying to convince everybody.
15:31: No, no, no. God really doesn't exist. He doesn't exist. You're trying to convince yourself because you know he does.
15:38: And you're trying to suppress that truth and unrighteousness. Romans chapter one, you don't do that with Santa because as you said, everybody knows he doesn't exist.
15:47: But those kids believe he's real. And the parents are trying to brainwash them into believing he's real. They even haven't put cookies out, have the kids put cookies out and the parents eat them.
15:56: Right? So yeah, sorry, there is brainwashing going on. They are lying to the children.
16:03: And yet you say that's the reason you're doing it. Hmm. Something doesn't seem consistent here.
16:09: No, no, not at all. Not at all. A speaking of what you're talking about here.
16:16: It's interesting to see some of the behavior online. And sometimes what
16:22: I'll do is I'll stir the pot a little bit. No. And no, really. You know where I see atheists the most?
16:31: I don't see atheists the most on, you know, like atheist pages or atheist groups, mostly because I'm not in them.
16:38: But it's okay, I don't need to go far. Because I can just go in a
16:43: Christian apologetics Facebook group. And I can share a post that will stir the pot.
16:49: Because I know that atheists will be there. And so I shared a promotion of our podcast together to a massive group called
17:00: Christian apologetics. And I shared it. And the atheists all came out of the woodworks.
17:09: And they have all they just have had all kinds of things to say, with regard to really the title.
17:14: Why do atheists spend so much time refuting a God they don't believe in? And what really gets my attention is they've got quite a few different excuses.
17:25: One atheist says here that Christians are the ones influencing legislation in trying to enforce their beliefs on our nation.
17:36: Do you buy that for a... So let's see, who is it that's trying to legalize abortion?
17:44: Is that the Christians? Hmm. If Christians had control, as they claim, we're having this influence over the government.
17:53: Wouldn't that be illegal everywhere? Hmm. I don't know.
18:00: And I've I have, I had a woman on, she goes by godless grandma, she came on to my apologetics live.
18:07: And it was it was really interesting because this is before the election. And she's like, big time liberal.
18:15: And she actually argues, well, actually, I could, I could play the clip.
18:20: If you want to hear her in her own voice. Play the clip. I'd love to hear it. Because she so so this is, this was her, like, you know, they used the idea of project 2025 is just as, you know, here's proof that, you know, this is wrong.
18:36: And so I was asking her, is there like, where in Christianity, where do we force you to go to church?
18:43: I mean, she was saying we're forcing it, we're legislating it. So here's, here's a short clip of it. It's the fact of I'm sharing with you what
18:52: I would see as good news. You wouldn't, I get it. But the thing is, there's a difference between saying this is the freedom of speech to say, this is what the
19:02: Bible says. I'm not telling you, you have to believe it. See, I'm not forcing you to be a Christian. I'm not.
19:07: And there's no, no Christians are trying to legislate to force you to be a
19:12: Christian or go to go to church. Have you seen project 2025? Did you see black blue 2025?
19:20: No, I have not. Where does that? Does that legislate that people have to be in church? I don't know if it does that.
19:27: I don't know if it does that because she didn't read it. Right. And so, but do you see how they do?
19:33: She, the question is, where are we forcing people to be? Where are we legislating that you have to be a
19:39: Christian? And her answer is project 2025. Okay, where does it do that? I don't know.
19:45: I didn't read it. Okay, right. This is the end. And this is how to deal with their arguments is don't.
19:54: I mean, I think so often the response Christians have is to try to say, oh, we're not trying to do that.
20:00: We're, you know, no, just call them out on the carpet. They're the ones doing it. Who, who is it that is suing
20:06: Christians, forcing them to make a cake for their, their, you know, same sex weddings?
20:15: Right. Is that, is that the Christians? Because the interesting thing and a guy went in that same town, where, where master's bakery is master cakes,
20:27: I think is the name of it, you know, that went up to the Supreme Court. And, and they, and the when the
20:32: Supreme deal, it was a big deal. And when the Supreme Court ruled that this guy didn't violate the law, you know what happened?
20:38: The very next day, someone, someone called in specifically wanting a transgender cake.
20:46: And when he said no, they started up a second lawsuit. And so he had to go to the
20:52: Supreme Court a second time. So, I mean, it's like just destroying his business. Now, what's interesting is after that first one, there was a guy that went to 13 different Muslim place,
21:06: Muslim bakeries, and asked them to make a same sex wedding cake. And they were chased out.
21:13: Literally one guy grabbed a broom and chased the guy out of the store, trying to smack him with a broom for suggesting it.
21:22: Why are none of those 13 bakeries being charged? Why are the, the, the homosexuals not going to any of those places?
21:33: They're under the influence of the same God. Correct. Correct. Which is not the
21:38: God of the Bible. It is the devil himself. Yeah, they're on the same side.
21:44: And so what you see is that when they when they make the argument, it's the reality is, they're the ones trying to change what
21:52: America, the Christian values this country was founded on. We're trying to conserve.
21:58: That's what conservative means. We want to conserve the original views of this country.
22:05: They're the ones that want to have a liberal view of it and make changes. They're the ones trying to legislate law that affects us.
22:17: Right. So an example of this, I, New Jersey was voting on same sex marriage,
22:22: I went before that, you know, before the legislature when, you know, they'd have this open thing, and they give you 30 seconds.
22:28: You know, we really want to hear what you say, as you know, we want to hear from the people, you got 30 seconds go, right.
22:35: And I just asked every one of them, do you believe in a separation of church and state? Every one of them said they believe in a separation of church and state.
22:42: I thought that very interesting. And I said to him, I said, Well, then every one of you must vote no on this bill, because marriage is a church issue and not a state issue.
22:50: So based upon your conviction, you must vote no and allow the church to have its say.
22:57: And if you vote yes, it means you do not believe in a separation of church and state, you believe the state should tell the church how to act.
23:05: And that's what it is. You know, if they really believed that Christians are legislating, then, you know, why are they trying to change the definition of marriage, they could call it anything.
23:17: They could call it a union, they can create a brand new term for it. They could, but they want to do marriage, because that is something based upon the
23:27: God of the Bible. Right. You know,
23:33: I'm kind of scrolling down through this, this thread that I shared to this supposed to be
23:40: Christian apologetics group. There's quite a few atheist apologists in it, though. Well, they're always well,
23:47: I mean, that's the whole thing is why, if you did not believe God exists, why would you spend your time in a
23:55: Christian apologetics group, and I run several Christian apologetics groups on Facebook, and they are filled with atheists.
24:05: Yeah. And, and they're, you know, we usually in some of the groups, we just remove them. I have one group where we allow it.
24:11: Because the whole purpose of it is practice your your apologetics. Yeah. I used to be a moderator for Ray Comfort used to have these, these forums, where they opened it up to the atheists, and a bunch of us were, were moderators.
24:27: So we would, you know, deal with all the answering the atheist arguments. And it's a great place to practice your apologetics.
24:35: Yeah. So I'm not against it. Yeah, I mean, it,
24:40: I'm not opposed to having dialogue with atheists online.
24:46: In fact, I think it can be really good if the particular atheist you're dealing with isn't going to, you know, how does it go?
24:56: If you're playing chess with a pigeon, and the pigeon knocks all the pieces on the board and craps all over the board?
25:03: Well, that's not really much of a chess game, is it? And sometimes when you run into these online atheists, they can be just like that pigeon.
25:13: And I just, like I said, scrolling through this thread, I believe this person is a
25:18: Christian, I could be wrong. But this person, his name is Nestor.
25:23: And he says, I think this has become a more recent phenomena, due to the rise of internet atheism, wrongfully convinced that erasing a real erasing religion, more specifically,
25:39: Christianity would result in a utopia. But I disagree with that. I disagree with that, because this goes well before the internet came around, doesn't it?
25:48: Well, it does. But I think what you see is the internet made some of the popular atheists popular, right?
25:57: You have the, what's referred to as the four horsemen that, you know, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Stephen, Christopher Hitchens, and I forget who the fourth one was.
26:11: But they, I mean, their rise was, was due to the internet, right? You know, social media specifically.
26:18: And YouTube used to be an atheist monopoly. Oh, yeah. Christian started making Christian channels.
26:24: Yeah. Well, even even when you had a Christian channel, the atheists used to constantly, especially if you had a show like mine, like my apologetics live, they used to come in all the time.
26:34: And, and I would, I would ask, I mean, I got to know some of them were Striving for Eternity is a Christ -centered ministry focused on equipping people for eternity.
26:43: And they provide speakers and seminars that come to your church with expertise in theology, hermeneutics, world religions, creation science, evangelism, presuppositional apologetics, church history, and expertise in sexual abuse in the church.
26:58: For details on their seminars, and to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
27:04: Striving to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. Well, I even I remember one atheist that lived in Jersey, where I lived in, we, you know, we got together and did a recording at his house.
27:17: And my wife was real nervous with that you're going to his house because I mean, and I said, No, I mean,
27:22: I've spoken to the guy for years, he's come on the show. And it was it was something where they would come in all the time.
27:32: And I go, I asked him, I'm like, why do you spend so much of your time? I mean, hours and hours and hours.
27:39: You're on Christian programs, trying to make arguments against Christianity. Why do that if you don't believe
27:46: God exists? It makes no sense. I mean, you got what 70 -80 years of life, and you're going to spend it arguing for something you don't believe in?
27:56: Right. You know, like, especially when they get really emotional, I go like, why are you so angry with the
28:02: God you say doesn't exist? That's that's not rational. Right.
28:08: Right. And in this, in this thread, I see one person saying, because they don't want you to believe in him either.
28:16: And I think that answer kind of misses the mark. Because I think this goes back to what you're saying, deep down, they really do believe that God exists.
28:26: And so this person, her name is Ayala. She says, because deep down, they really know he exists.
28:34: They're just upset at the fact that he doesn't exist. And they're trying to say, well, that's a religious hypocrites that they grew up around and let the stupidity of religious hypocrites spoil their relationship with God.
28:44: Now, I have a number of issues with that answer, but I think they started out right.
28:51: But then they got a little derailed. There is this common conception that atheists view
28:58: Christians as a social harm to them. You want to speak to that?
29:04: Yeah, okay, so a couple points of that. First, a good presuppositional argument, right?
29:10: Point out what scripture says. The reason they're spending the time in doing it is partially what that person said was true.
29:19: It's because they want it dead in their own conscience. Why does the alcoholic like to have others drink with him?
29:25: Because his conscience is screaming that he's doing something wrong. What he thinks is, if there's more people agreeing with me,
29:34: I could feel better about myself. This is no different than the whole woke agenda.
29:40: Why do they want to force everyone to agree with them? It's because they know they're being racist and they want others to agree with them so they can feel better about their racism, okay?
29:51: So this is common behavior. So the fact that they're trying to convince everyone is the proof that,
29:57: A, they know their conscience is screaming out that they're wrong. So that was a good argument.
30:07: Now, when it got into, I forget how she worded that there.
30:15: Read that again. So the way Ayala words it, she says, because deep down they really know he exists because they're just upset with religious hypocrites.
30:26: Religious hypocrites. Yeah, that was the part. I forgot how she worded it and I knew it was something other than just hypocrites.
30:32: So the reality is, and a point you made is, they're really upset with what they see as religious hypocrites of who they grew up with.
30:44: Yeah, well, yeah, that was actually the second part of her. Okay. And with that,
30:49: I'll just say, I used to, thousands of people, professing atheists that I talked to, and I would ask them, and they were like these hardcore atheists,
31:00: I just would always go, tell me about the church you grew up with in. And do you know that there's probably only one or two in like a thousand that didn't grow up in church?
31:10: And they were very quick to have some issue. A deacon raped his sister. It was legalism.
31:18: A lot of it comes down to, I was told I couldn't do what I wanted to do. In other words,
31:23: I wanted to sin and the church wouldn't let me. Guys that wanted to look at porn, people who wanted to have, men and women that wanted to have sex.
31:35: And so it was really a rebellion against their upbringing. Nowadays, it's not the hardcore atheists.
31:42: It's the practicing homosexuals and transgenders. And what you see there is that what they're doing is they're rebelling against, as far as they can against what they hate.
31:52: They were told the truth. They hate the truth and they want to try to go as far as they can.
31:59: I know one person, his daughter actually went into, very smart person, but she went into pornography.
32:09: And she probably knows more theology than most Christians. And my point to her is, so let me get this straight.
32:17: You hate your father so much that you decided to define your life by him. Your whole life is trying to get him to get back at him.
32:29: Is that really rational? You say you don't like your dad so much that you're going to redefine your entire life by him.
32:38: And what you don't like is that he said you couldn't do things because God said so. And so where are the hypocrites?
32:47: That argument, when it says religious hypocrites, the reality is Christians, the entrance into Christianity is to recognize that you are a sinner.
32:59: You are saved by grace. Therefore, Christians don't claim to be perfect.
33:05: They claim to be sinners. You want the hypocrites? The hypocrites are the professing atheists that say they're a good person.
33:13: The hypocrites are those that say that they don't need God. They're good without God.
33:20: They can think without God. Well, no, you can't because you can't explain that ability to reason.
33:26: That's an immaterial thing. It needs an immaterial source. And so what you have is the case that they're not the hypocrites.
33:36: What it is is that you have people that grew up in a church or in a religious family, and they were hypocrites pretending to be a
33:46: Christian. They stopped pretending, and they think, oh, well, the rest of them are the hypocrites because they want to blame them for why they leave.
33:53: No, you left because you loved your sin. Yes. In fact,
33:59: I think a man by the name of Aldous Huxley puts it very well, and I'm sure you've heard of Aldous Huxley.
34:06: And he says in Ends and Means, I believe that's a writing that he did. He said,
34:12: I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning and consequently assumed that it had none and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.
34:27: The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics.
34:36: He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason for why he personally should not do as he wants to do.
34:47: For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality.
35:01: And we know that that system in Christianity. But he says, we object to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.
35:14: The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning, the
35:20: Christian meaning, they insisted, of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt.
35:35: We would deny that the world had any meaning, whatever. That just screams of everything you're talking about.
35:44: Yeah. And it's quite bold and honest, honestly, like, quite shocked at his honesty in that quote there.
35:52: But that's what you're saying reminds me of. That's what Aldous Huxley has to say. I did a debate many years ago, and I was actually kind of surprised.
36:02: The guy wanted to debate the topic. And he chose the topic, secular humanism is superior to Christianity.
36:12: Okay. And it was really a bad debate because the guy,
36:18: I mean, the guy just did not, well, it was a bad debate because the guy wasn't really there to debate.
36:25: It became this thing where what he did was, you know how debates work, the most important part of debates, the cross -examination.
36:34: Well, instead of cross examining me, he just did a monologue. He just tried to do a second rebuttal and then a third rebuttal.
36:42: He didn't want questions. It was like, that's what you're supposed to do in a debate, but hey, okay.
36:52: And so, you know, it was really a bad, weird, but there was an article in the
36:58: Atlantic, and I'm trying to search for it now so I can give you the title.
37:06: The Atlantic is a very, very leftist newspaper or a magazine per se or group.
37:17: And so, they had an article that I used where they basically said, in the debate,
37:25: I read from it, and it basically laid out that the conclusion was though they know that God doesn't exist, they said it's important that we pretend that it does because basically what they ended up realizing was that if we don't believe in God, people are, you know, they mistreat one another.
37:56: They don't do well with one another. So, it was kind of interesting that they recognized that in all the studies that they did, they had realized that people, if they don't feel that they're going to be accountable to God, they will mistreat one another and do whatever is best in their own eyes, aka judges.
38:24: Yeah. And their studies showed that people are more likely to lie, to cheat, to kill, to steal, if they didn't believe they were going to be held accountable in an afterlife.
38:37: And so, the conclusion of the article was that it's better to believe in God even though we know he doesn't exist because that's better for the culture and for society.
38:51: Interesting they come to that conclusion, and it's so true because if you remove the moral law giver, the moral law loses its potency because there's no one to keep you accountable to that moral law.
39:05: And so, yeah, it's interesting that the leftists and secularists are coming to that conclusion.
39:15: That's pretty fascinating, actually. And what an honest... And if I could find the article...
39:22: It's crazy. If I could find the article, I'll send it to you. Yeah, send it to me. I'd love to read it. Here's something
39:29: I want to ask your question on, because there are atheists,
39:35: I guess, who go through their life and they don't... Hold on, let me correct that. There's those who profess to be atheists.
39:43: Thank you. Yes, yes, sorry, sorry. Yeah, don't want to make that mistake in front of a presuppositionalist, right?
39:51: So... Well, no, it's an important thing because, you know, we don't want to give in on the language.
39:57: True. That's true. This is the mistake often that people make is they give in and give up the discussion, the debate, when they accept the professing atheist language.
40:14: Yeah, their terminology. Yeah, and even their thing, like the term homosexual.
40:20: You see, I will often... I don't use that term, though I did earlier in this episode.
40:27: I'll usually say those who practice homosexuality. Why? Because they say they're a homosexual, like,
40:35: I can't control this. I was born this way. You can control it. And if you can't, you should be punished the same way the person who says, well, he's a serial murderer.
40:45: He was born this way. So should we just let him murder? Because, hey, it's the way he was born.
40:52: Or should we curb that type of behavior and say that it's wrong? Yeah, and that is actually such an effective way of addressing these issues because you need, just on the practical front, they need to know that they've run into a worldview that is very different from theirs.
41:14: You know, and what you often see with Christians is we try to adopt the world's terminology so that we can get a foot in the door or at least earn their respect.
41:28: Or, you know, if you want to, it's kind of the 11th commandment, which is be nice, right?
41:35: And no, granted, I'm not saying that we should be free to be mean or cruel or unkind or anything like that.
41:40: But it becomes this thing where you need to be politically correct. You need to use their language on their terms in order that they will like you.
41:50: And God wants you to be that way. And so thank you for bringing that up. And that article, I found that article
41:56: I was mentioning before. It's at the Atlantic, and it's called, There's No Such Thing as Free Will, But We're Better Off Believing It Anyway by Stephen Cave.
42:06: Okay, interesting. So even their subtitle is telling you the conclusion. I'm kidding,
42:11: I'm kidding. I know Calvinists believe in free will. No, no. Just a different kind of free will.
42:17: Believe in will, in a will. In a will, yeah. No one, like in this thing, it's the term free that I have an issue with.
42:23: I think we're enslaved to sin. Well, I think that we're enslaved to sin, as Romans says,
42:29: Romans 5, 6, 7. We're enslaved to sin, so it's not free until we're saved. Adam and Eve had a free will.
42:36: We don't. We do have a free will once we're in Christ because the Holy Spirit indwells us. Yeah. It's hard to disagree with that.
42:44: Because it's the Bible. I bet you are. We should do a show on that.
42:51: I bet you are. Okay, okay. So Corinna Fultz, she says this.
43:00: Not exactly sure how true this is based on personal experience alone.
43:06: I was an atheist of over 12 years and I rarely ever contemplated religion until right before my conversion.
43:14: During those 12 years, I simply couldn't care less. There are a lot of loud atheists on the internet, but they are only a small percentage of all atheists in the world.
43:26: So it seems a bit unfair to compare the vast majority to the loud ones we see online, in my opinion.
43:34: Just quickly, my takeaway, and if Corinna is listening, I just want you to know,
43:39: I don't know if you actually have hard data to support your claim that the vast majority of atheists aren't like this.
43:49: That's really hard to judge. That said, most atheists that I run into do have this sort of attitude, but that doesn't negate the idea that an atheist may go so long without even thinking about God.
44:02: And so I want to turn that over to you, Andrew. There are atheists, supposedly, who don't think about God.
44:11: And that doesn't come across their mind whatsoever. But do you want to speak to the idea that it's only the loud atheists that we're running into?
44:21: I think she has a valid point, because the ones we run into are those that are commenting.
44:31: There's plenty of people who I have worked with over the years that would claim to be an atheist, but they would never say it unless you start the discussion.
44:42: I would talk to them. I would, at some point, share the gospel. They would claim that they're an atheist.
44:48: We'd talk about it, and then they would continue working. It wasn't something that we didn't have to bring up the topic.
44:55: They wouldn't bring it up over and over again. So you have a lot of people like that, but the ones we often come in contact with or think about are those, like you're saying, that are in all of our
45:06: Christian groups. And they go in the groups because they want to respond. And why do they want to do it?
45:11: Atheist missionaries. Yeah. And the reason is, I think, look, you know who is the biggest anti -smoker of cigarette smoking?
45:22: The person who quit cigarettes, right? They quit and they want everyone else to do it also.
45:29: That is the professing atheist. They grew up Christian, and they quit it, and they want everyone else to be also.
45:39: Let me give, for you in the audience listening, maybe you've come across these people. I used to be a
45:45: Christian. They'll make that claim. And it's actually, the way they usually do it is they say, well,
45:51: I used to be a Christian as if, well, since I used to be a Christian, I'm now speaking as an authority because me growing up as a child,
45:59: I know everything there is to know. No. That's a bad argument. I grew up Jewish, but I didn't really understand
46:08: Judaism until I started studying the Talmud as an adult. And so just because you grew up that way doesn't mean you have a mastery on it.
46:19: But I will often bring up 1 John 2 .19. And the way I would do it, as I did on the show that I was on two days ago,
46:29: I asked the guys, because both these people, both these guys claim, I used to be a Christian. They were
46:35: Calvinist Christians even. And I ended up finding out part of their issue is the one guy said, well, he was a determinist.
46:41: I'm like, well, that's not Calvinist. That's like what we call hyper -Calvinist. And so it explained a lot.
46:47: He grew up in a church where if that's what they actually believed, I often hear people say that, well, this is what
46:53: I was taught. And it's really, no, that's what you heard. Because you didn't want to hear what was actually taught.
46:59: But I don't know the church he grew up in. But I said, okay, you guys both claim to be a
47:05: Christian. Yeah. So you believe your ultimate authority was God and His Word.
47:11: And they're like, yeah. So you believe what God said in 1 John 2 .19 when it says, they went out from us, but were not really of us.
47:21: For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us.
47:26: But they went out so that it would be shown that they were not of us.
47:31: So you guys were not Christians according to the Bible, were you? And these two actually said, you're right.
47:39: Most will say, no, they get into this thing. Oh, I believed, I believe. But this verse, if you believed the
47:44: Bible, then you believe this verse. And if you believe this verse, then this verse says, the reason you left is because you were never a
47:54: Christian. So you were a hypocrite that stopped pretending. And now you want to try to claim some, you know, authority of knowledge, because you used to be something that you were pretending to be.
48:08: I don't take my, I'm not going to take my position on what Islam believes from a bunch of Christians.
48:16: I'm going to take it from what the Quran teaches. Yes. Right. And so, and I'm not going to take it from a bunch of people that used to be
48:24: Muslim because they were hypocrites. They didn't believe it. I want people that actually believe it, if I'm going to study something.
48:30: So why should I believe you, a guy who claims to be an atheist, who says, well,
48:36: I grew up Christian, I used to be a Christian, when the Bible is very clear, you never were. Right?
48:43: And so I think, I mean, this is a verse, anytime you're going to deal with these type of people, professing atheists who claim they used to be
48:52: Christian, you need to either know where to find it or memorize 1
48:58: John 2 .19. It's an important one to have in your back pocket. Yeah.
49:04: And I know that the general thing with this overall topic is, is it seems like we're painting with a broad brush over all atheists.
49:16: And I can appreciate Corinna's comment in that way.
49:23: But I don't think it is unfair to, to say that, especially, you know, when we run into the amount of traffic that we get, and we get these atheists, like what you're talking about here, who, oh,
49:37: I used to be a Christian, and now I'm not. And I'm trying to save you from wasting your life on Christianity, you know, that kind of stuff.
49:44: And, and so in that sense, it's not our job to be a, to be politically correct, in the sense that we acknowledge that there are some atheists who aren't out there trying to do this.
50:02: But the fact of the matter is, is that there are atheists that do this, and they do it a lot. And they spend a lot of time online.
50:09: I had a student just the other day, who was going back and forth with some guy who claimed, and when
50:16: I say I had a student, I am a youth pastor. So I had a student just the other day, who was going back and forth with someone.
50:23: He's like, Oh, I used to believe all this stuff like you did. And, and then I left it because I realized it was wrong.
50:29: And again, another example of someone, if this guy's even telling the truth, mind you, because he claims some pretty interesting stuff that he read the whole
50:41: Bible, you know, front to back several times. And he's looked at all the arguments for everything.
50:48: And he just couldn't believe in Christianity. So for me, right off the bat, when someone who says they're an atheist says they've read the
50:56: Bible front to back, that immediately strikes me as this guy's probably lying.
51:02: Because most Christians haven't read the Bible front to back, which is not a good thing either.
51:09: But correct. But anyway, just, just to throw that out there. So that immediately strikes me as okay, this guy's probably lying.
51:15: All that to say, it still happens. It still happens. You've got the, you know, atheist missionaries on the internet doing their thing.
51:23: You know, you've got these YouTube channels, like cosmic skeptic, and you've got all these debates that Richard Dawkins does.
51:31: And Sam Harris has his YouTube channel. And they spend all this time, and they specifically go after Christianity.
51:40: Now, I do have some props for Rick, Richard Dawkins, in the sense that he does go after Islam.
51:47: And he seems to have changed his tune about Christianity recently, not saying that he's converted or anything.
51:54: No, no, he's changed. But he's, why has he changed it? He changed it because after all these years of attacking
52:01: Christianity, he has seen in his own country, the rise of Islam. And he suddenly realized,
52:08: Christianity versus Islam, Islam is a greater problem. He's seeing that he is starting to recognize, same as Bill Maher, who did a whole documentary against Christianity.
52:20: And he, you know, if you ever watched his documentary, Religiosity, I think is what it's called.
52:28: And it was, you know, he just, he found the worst examples he could to make his point. And so, in doing that, what you end up seeing is, these guys are recognizing that, you know,
52:40: Christianity is actually the things, you know, keeping back, the Christian values keeps back the ideas that Islam is promoting.
52:50: And they're bemoaning the culture that they have created. They've argued for a culture where there is no
52:58: God. And in that vacuum, Islam has filled it. And as that is starting to take hold, they're going, wait a minute, this is even worse than what we had before.
53:09: Because where they're sitting there saying, well, Christians are trying to force their beliefs on people, Islam actually does do that.
53:16: Islam actually is to, so the idea of Islam, and for folks that don't know, and if you get my book,
53:26: What Do They Believe?, I talk about this in the chapter on Islam, it's to be a Muslim.
53:31: So, Islam means to submit. Okay. So, a Muslim is one who submits. So, everything in Islam is about submitting to Allah, not having your own will.
53:45: It is the suppression of your will to follow the will of Allah. And that requires them to try to bring about Islam across the world by force, if need be.
54:00: Jihad. Well, if it needs to come to that, yes. And so, you got guys like this, they're starting to wake up and go, wait a minute.
54:08: We said Christians were forcing their beliefs on us, but the Muslims actually are. And we don't like those.
54:14: We want Christianity back. And Richard Dawkins, he wants it back, but not in a religious way, just in a societal way.
54:23: He wants the benefits of what Christianity brings, but he doesn't want the restrictions he sees of them.
54:31: And you can't separate those. Right. It just makes me think even more of what
54:39: Aldous Huxley said in that quote I shared with you, just that in order to break free and to be able to do what he wanted, he took on this philosophy of meaninglessness, which is what atheism is.
54:56: And I think with Richard Dawkins, we're seeing the flip side of all of that hard work of liberating themselves from the sexual ethic of Christianity and not just the sexual ethic, the general ethics that comes with Christianity.
55:16: They're realizing that they actually like some of those ethics. They just want to do what they want to do.
55:22: And here Richard Dawkins is, he's in this society now that has given
55:27: Christianity, largely given Christianity the boot. And now
55:32: Islam, as you said, is filling that vacuum, and he's like, oh man, did we make a mistake?
55:38: And boy, have they. And they will face that for generations to come. And it's like...
55:45: It's basically, hey, you wanted Christianity as society. Well, okay, you got it. How does it look?
55:53: Yeah. And I find myself wondering, will we get a new wave of atheists who are trying to bring it back?
55:58: You know, we have all these atheists trying to refute this God that they don't believe in. Specifically, seems to almost always be
56:05: Christianity, except now we're seeing this rise of the Richard Dawkins, I don't know, view.
56:14: Okay, maybe Christianity wasn't so bad. I kind of miss it. Islam is pretty scary.
56:20: And so I'm wondering, will we see a flip from our atheist friends on the other side of the aisle of this debate?
56:29: I'm kind of curious. So the answer to that, specifically with who we're talking about, the answer is yes.
56:36: So let me let you in on a little secret, a little behind the scenes. Okay. Richard Dawkins had a guy who worked for him.
56:45: He was young when he started, like in his early 20s. But he was Richard Dawkins' right -hand man. He did everything.
56:52: And so turns out that for all the years that he was working with Richard Dawkins and addressing
56:59: Christianity, well, he converted to Christianity. He actually reached out to Ray Comfort.
57:07: And so this is how I know the story, is from Ray. And Ray told me that this guy not only, and I think
57:13: Ray's done some videos either with the guy or about the guy. But basically, this guy actually said that, one of the things, like Ray, and this is a good thing for all of us who are listening, you want to do bold apologia, you want to do bold apologics.
57:28: Well, you look at a guy like Ray Yes. He's the inspiration. So Richard Dawkins was merciless to Ray, merciless.
57:42: And I mean, Ray's come out now publicly, but many people privately know
57:48: Ray knew, it bothered him. I mean, this guy would really make fun of Ray and Ray's just a super sweet guy.
57:56: And so it turns out that this guy that got saved, Ray, you know,
58:01: Richard Dawkins, secondhand guy, said that he, one of the things he had told Ray was that, because, you know,
58:08: Dawkins makes fun of Ray. So you know what Ray's reaction is? Ray, you know, he'd make fun of Ray by calling him banana man, insulting about a banana thing.
58:17: And so basically what happened was Ray would find out where Richard Dawkins was speaking next, and send a fruit basket to every hotel for every event.
58:29: And he would make sure to include a banana. And he would just, he would just sign it like, you know, your loving friend,
58:38: Ray Comfort, the banana man, right. And Richard Dawkins had said to his assistant,
58:46: Ray Comfort is a very difficult man to hate. Because the more
58:52: Richard Dawkins would do against Ray, the more Ray would try to show love to him.
58:59: That was awesome. And that had an impact, maybe not on Dawkins, but on his assistant for sure.
59:07: That is awesome. You know, actually a little bit of history on why this is called the
59:12: Bold Apology, a podcast. So that blog I shared with you, Andrew, that came before the podcast.
59:19: And I started this blog a long time ago, I was, I think, just graduated high school or something.
59:28: So two years ago? Yeah, something like that. And at the time, I was inspired by Ray Comfort and the way he did evangelism from that kind of apologetic perspective.
59:42: And so that's kind of where that came from. And he is bold. I've got his school of evangelism that he does with, what's the guy's name?
59:50: Kirk Cameron. Okay. So I'll give you a little secret there. You know who actually wrote that? His name is
59:55: Mark Spence. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Mark wrote it and they put
01:00:01: Ray and Kirk's name on it because they're the more well -known guys, which tells you a little bit about Mark, you know, and his humility that he'd rather they get credit for his work.
01:00:13: Wow. That's pretty awesome of him. Yeah. He's a pretty awesome guy. I know a lot of pretty godly man in that sense.
01:00:22: Just, huh. Well, I'm going to look him up and see if he's got any other material then too. Oh, he's got a bunch.
01:00:28: Yeah. Yeah. That is awesome. That is really cool. Anyway, but yeah, that is pretty incredible what you shared there.
01:00:40: Yeah. I don't know if I would have the guts to spend that much money on fruit baskets for a richer duck.
01:00:49: You know, people are, in the past, the atheists used to be critical about how much, you know, the ministry would pay
01:00:57: Ray. And it wasn't a huge amount, but they were like trying to say, oh, look, he's, you know, they want to make it look like he was, you know, like doing it for the money.
01:01:10: And what they don't know is Ray gives away most of his money. He does not live,
01:01:17: I mean, I've been to his house. He doesn't have some luxury house. It's very low income, you know, but, you know, he gives away his money.
01:01:28: So yeah, they may pay him pretty good, but he would give it all away. And so he uses money as a way of showing love and kindness to others.
01:01:39: Just a little bit of conviction for many of us. Would we be willing to part with our money to share the gospel?
01:01:48: Think about that, folks. I mean, yeah, I do mean to cause conviction maybe, but I mean, or as Adam would say, let's stir that pot, right?
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01:02:45: SFE. I mean, what's more important to you, sharing the gospel with someone or buying a meal?
01:02:56: I mean, I had to have a habit when I used to work at a secular job and I'd have to drive in the office every day.
01:03:03: I used to stop at a Wawa. That's like a convenience store out here. And I would go get my coffee and I'd go every day.
01:03:13: So they knew who I was and they all knew what I was going to do. I would go in and I would let the cashier know, hey,
01:03:20: I'm going to pay for the person behind me. And it boggles my mind that no one ever figured out.
01:03:28: They ring me up, I never paid yet, and they grab who's ever behind me and start ringing them up.
01:03:35: And they would ring them up and then charge me and people never noticed.
01:03:41: It's amazing because the first thing in the morning, people are just completely asleep, I guess. But they would see them ringing them up and then
01:03:49: I would pay and I would just leave a gospel track there and I would walk out. And the cashier would tell the person behind me, the man in front of you is a
01:03:58: Christian. He just bought your breakfast. He just would like you to read this. And they would give him the gospel tract. And because I would go every day,
01:04:06: I ended up meeting some people who were like, I had one person come up and she was like, sir, you were in front of me in line a couple of months ago and you gave me that little paper to read and I just want to thank you for that.
01:04:19: Now, it's interesting. She didn't thank me for breakfast. And that's what struck me.
01:04:27: She thanked me for the gospel track. She didn't know what to call it. Right. So are you willing to do that?
01:04:35: Yeah. My wife was like, can you write that off on taxes? It's kind of ministry.
01:04:41: I'm like, yeah, no. I doubt it. Well, a really good way to tie what you're saying into this broader topic is just the simple fact that why do atheists spend so much time doing this?
01:05:00: Well, probably because deep down, they need what we have to offer.
01:05:09: They think that they're refuting God, but perhaps they're being tugged on and they're being pulled in so that someone like us can share the gospel of Jesus Christ with them and that hopefully they'll be saved.
01:05:26: That's kind of a different way of looking at it, but I think it's an important way of looking at it.
01:05:32: Often, we view these people as agitators and they're just out to start trouble and all of this stuff.
01:05:39: And you know what? It's true. A lot of these people online, they're looking for a fight.
01:05:44: They want to fight. They want to treat you like Richard Dawkins treated
01:05:52: Ray Comfort and calling him Banana Man. I've been called way worse than Banana Man by some of these atheists.
01:06:00: But then again, at the same time, I don't have the high profile that Ray Comfort had in Richard Dawkins.
01:06:08: Whereas maybe a few people are going to see that an atheist called me some vulgar thing we don't have thousands of people seeing them say that.
01:06:18: Whereas with Ray Comfort, oh gosh, a lot of people probably know him as Banana Man now. It can bother you.
01:06:26: Look, there's been YouTube channels that were created dedicated to mocking me.
01:06:34: Even when I'm doing something like doing the Christian apologetics, okay, I could see the atheists come in, but we have a
01:06:41: Striving Fraternity Academy where I teach how to interpret the Bible, Systematic Theology, Introduction to World Religions, Introduction to Discipleship, right?
01:06:49: Things like this. It's not about atheism. But every Monday we would do a show.
01:06:55: There was a guy every Tuesday morning, he had a video out mocking whatever the class was
01:07:03: I taught the night before. And it's just, it's amazing. Okay.
01:07:09: Did you get a lot of views? Huh? Did you get a lot of views? No. What a low life.
01:07:15: I'm sorry, but. Yeah. I mean, it's like, and he would send it to me like to see, cause what I am sure what he wanted was, he wanted to build a platform off of me.
01:07:23: So his mockery me, if I would respond, he could get people, you know, checking it out. And I just laughed at it.
01:07:29: I said, you know, he'd make comments and I'd go, oh, that was kind of funny, you know? Or I would,
01:07:34: I literally would respond and go, oh, you missed, you could have given this joke, you know? And so he actually ended up stopping cause it didn't bother me.
01:07:43: Yeah. You know, and, and, and I use wasting his time too. Well, it's not just wasting his time. I said something sort of what you said earlier,
01:07:51: I said, you know, I really appreciate you spending so much time reviewing our classes and your mockery shows that, you know, the
01:07:59: God that exists is, is convicting you of your sin. Yeah. And he really hated it.
01:08:06: Cause that was usually my response to him. And he hated it because God doesn't exist. I don't believe God exists.
01:08:11: In fact, I had, so I, I went to New York city at union square for, you know, a decade or two, like about 15 to 20 years, 15, 18 years.
01:08:22: I would go every, every summer up until COVID. That's when we stopped. And so I'd have some of the same hecklers for years.
01:08:31: I had one heckler. His name is Jason Cross. Jason, I believe was homeless.
01:08:37: He wouldn't admit to it, but he had such a pride issue. Every, what
01:08:43: I had a habit of doing is every time I got to union square, I went to the regulars, Jason and Solomon, and there's a bunch of other guys.
01:08:50: And I would make sure to walk up to them. And I, and just for the example of Jason, I would say, Jason, man, you know,
01:08:57: I was praying for you this week. He'd be like, man, don't be wasting your time. That God doesn't exist.
01:09:02: I said, you may believe, want to say you believe that, but I know he exists. And I was lifting you up before the throne of glory.
01:09:11: And when I would leave, I would go to each one of the regulars and say, hey, Jason, just want to know,
01:09:17: I want you to know, I'm going to be praying for you this week. Right? So I did that for six years.
01:09:22: Now I want you to understand, son, in six years, and he heckled me longer, but in six years, Jason would never shake my hand.
01:09:31: Every time I went to leave, I'd offer to shake his hand. Wouldn't do it. When I got to the park,
01:09:38: I'd try to shake his hand. He wouldn't do it. So after six years of this, of me having the same thing, saying
01:09:43: I'm praying for him when I get there, saying I'm praying. One day he turns when I got there and he goes, man, you ain't really praying for me.
01:09:50: And I said, really? I opened my phone. I opened my prayer app and I showed him. And what he didn't realize is not only was
01:09:58: I praying for him, but I knew a family member of his who is, who is imprisoned. And he didn't know
01:10:03: I knew about that. He, I had his cousins that I've been praying just because he would talk to his friends and I would hear it.
01:10:12: And I put that in my prayer list. When I left that, that Saturday, it was the first time when
01:10:18: I offered a handshake to him. Jason shook my hand and I knew it's because he realized
01:10:25: I really was praying for him. I wasn't just saying it. Right. The real deal.
01:10:31: Yeah. And, and that's the thing. Sometimes they, they, they want to believe you're just being a hypocrite.
01:10:36: You're just saying it. And when they realize you actually mean it, you're actually doing it, you're actually living out what you say, they will, they respect that and recognize it.
01:10:48: Yeah. You know, and, and that's the kind of the advantage of doing the open air that I do and having regular hecklers.
01:10:54: I mean, I, Solomon is a guy, he's an Israeli. Probably one of the most vile hecklers
01:11:01: I've ever had. Just really mockery, just complete and utter mockery.
01:11:07: And, but because of the respectful way that I treated him for years, he had a respect for me.
01:11:14: It also had to do with one time where he got, he got sucker punched and I literally jumped off my box and jumped in between him and his attacker.
01:11:23: And I, and his attacker actually fell backwards because he was trying to get out of my way so fast.
01:11:29: And Solomon told one of his friends that he never saw anyone move that quickly. And I think it, it shocked him that I, with all the times he's mocked me,
01:11:37: I went and defended him when he got sucker punched. And so, cause it happened like right, right to my left side and that I would defend him and the, and the police had, had seen it.
01:11:50: And I, you know, and there, there was an ambulance just happened to be there. And so, you know, I took him and, and, and got care for him.
01:11:57: And it was really kind of funny because they asked for his, his name and he had to give his full name. He was really worried about, they, they wanted to see his
01:12:05: ID. He was worried showing that with me. And I said to him, I said,
01:12:10: Solomon, you do what you need to do. I don't care what, you know, what your real name is.
01:12:15: Like, it's fine. You know, this is what's more important right now is you getting the medical care.
01:12:21: I said, if you want, I'll walk away. You, you give all the information. And he just looked at me and says, nah, it's okay.
01:12:27: Now, to be honest, I forgot his real name. Okay. But I say this to say that all of that to say this, you know, when
01:12:36: Harold Camping predicted the end of the world, right? If you remember that for his third time or fourth time, whatever, you know, whatever it was.
01:12:46: Solomon went to Union Square. I wasn't there that weekend. He got a big cross and he hung himself on the cross, mocking
01:12:53: Christ. And the next time I went to the park, I went to him.
01:12:58: I said, Solomon, I don't ever want to hear that you did anything like that ever again.
01:13:04: He's like, why? Your God doesn't exist. It doesn't matter. You know, dah, dah, dah, dah. And he was big on the free hugs movement.
01:13:10: And there was another atheist that mocked the free hugs guys. And I said, look, did you get upset when, you know, so -and -so mocked the free hug guys?
01:13:18: He's like, yeah. I said, okay, you're upset because these are people you love, right? He goes, yeah. I said, when you mock
01:13:25: Christ, you're mocking someone that I love dearly. I said, I don't take that lightly.
01:13:30: So I am grievously offended by your behavior. I don't care if you thought it was funny.
01:13:37: And he looked at me and said, you know, Andrew, I will never do that again. Please, you know,
01:13:43: I'm sorry that that bothered you. Now, that doesn't come about without years and years and years of being mocked, being ridiculed, having him literally stripped down to his underwear and parade in front of me.
01:13:57: He did that. And he would try to get a rise out of people. It didn't work with me.
01:14:03: All I did when he did that, this is just my behavior. He did that. You know what I did, Adam? I just went, folks, quick, get some money.
01:14:09: This guy can't even afford clothes. And he got so embarrassed by that, he ran off, put his clothes back on and came back.
01:14:17: It's like, I'll just go with it, right? But, you know, how do we do that?
01:14:23: How do we get that respect with those who profess to be atheists? Well, it's not just by sharing the gospel, but it is also by how we conduct ourselves.
01:14:32: That's why at Striving for Eternity, we teach, we call it ambassador evangelism, because it's not just about what you say, but it's about how you conduct yourself.
01:14:42: Because the reality is, as we've been talking, these professing atheists are not reacting to what they were taught.
01:14:50: They were reacting to what they saw. They saw people that in their minds were not living up to what they expected them to do.
01:15:02: And so when I'm out on the streets sharing the gospel, I am never pretending to be perfect.
01:15:08: In fact, when I talk about someone and I go through the law with them, I will say, you are probably, or you could be,
01:15:15: I say it different ways, but you could be or probably are far more moral person than me. So I'm giving the credit.
01:15:21: I'm saying, hey, we're both sinners here, but you could be more moral than me, but your morality is not going to lead you to heaven.
01:15:28: It's not going to get you right with God, right? So I will always give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the moral issue, because I know me,
01:15:37: I don't know them. But you see, that ends up being something where it's our character that people are watching.
01:15:45: They're watching that more than what we say. So if you have these professing atheists that they spend so much time reading about God, you know what they're really looking for?
01:15:56: They're looking for someone who's sincere. They're not going to listen to the person who's looking to debate with them and prove, let's fight it out and I'll argue my view, you argue your view, and I'm going to feel better about my delusion in the end, because I think that I explained away all your arguments.
01:16:15: Yeah. And yet the real thing that they can't deal with and they have a trouble with is sincerity.
01:16:23: You know, the show I was on two days ago, we go off the air, and the first thing that the host says to me with his co -host is he goes, man, you are the best guest
01:16:35: I think we've ever had on. They've been doing it for four years. And they're both like, yeah, we want to have you back. It was such a good discussion, because they wanted this fight.
01:16:44: I mean, there's a debate show. It's called, now that's debatable, it's the name of the show. And they wanted a big debate where you're, you know, and they didn't get that.
01:16:51: At each other's throat. Yeah. And I mean, I test, okay, granted, Adam, you like to stir the pot.
01:16:57: Okay. I stirred the pot a little. I started the show. It was April 1st that they had me on.
01:17:04: Okay. And I said, I just want to thank you guys for having me on your show on National Atheist Day.
01:17:12: And they both looked at me kind of puzzled. And I went, well, the Bible says that the fool says in his heart, there is no
01:17:20: God. And they laughed. Well, the one guy laughed, the other guy chuckled. And I went, okay, I just wanted to see if you guys, whether we're going to get along or not.
01:17:26: We're going to get along fine. You guys can take a joke, you know, and that kind of set the tone.
01:17:32: Because they really were trying, they were trying to egg me on, egg me on. And I mean, to the point where they over talk each other.
01:17:39: And like a couple of times I said, hey, listen, guys, for the audience sake, like, let's not talk over each other.
01:17:45: Because like, I can't even hear you guys to know what you're saying. So the audience can. I said, we're talking over each other, you know.
01:17:53: And so I kept like, where they kept trying to get themselves riled up. I kept just going, like, let's have a good conversation here, you know.
01:18:02: Because the sincerity is, I think, harder for them to deal with. Yeah. And I think perhaps some of that ties into what you were saying earlier in the podcast, just that a lot of the atheists you have run into were previously involved in church in some way.
01:18:23: And they had walked away from that. And in your own words, they had stopped being a hypocrite. They didn't actually believe.
01:18:30: And so they walked away. And so when they see Christians, they're looking at the behavior of Christians to see, is this person the real deal, assuming already that they probably aren't.
01:18:43: And there's contempt for that, because it seems like it could be maybe they had a little bit of contempt for who they were, when they were being a hypocrite in that way.
01:18:54: And now they've just moved on to a different kind of hypocrisy. And I think a lot of what they're dealing with is an inner pride.
01:19:03: Well, now I'm more superior because I'm true to myself. But again, atheists often have that sort of good works mentality that I'm a good person.
01:19:16: And as long as I'm a good person, I'm okay. Completely ignoring what Scripture would say.
01:19:22: And for good reason, they're atheists, but still suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. Yeah, and you make a really good point that I hadn't thought of before.
01:19:32: And that is that they knew they were pretending when they were claiming to be a Christian. They knew their own hypocrisy.
01:19:39: So I wonder how much of it is when they say, oh, well, I saw the hypocrisy in the church, this person, that person.
01:19:45: I wonder how much of it is really their own hypocrisy that they were struggling with, that they didn't like, that guilty conscience.
01:19:54: And so their way of dealing with it was just to give themselves over to the hypocrisy and claim it's reality so that they could feel better about their sin.
01:20:06: It's an interesting thought. We won't know, but that very well could be.
01:20:12: The human heart is difficult for us to understand. And I think there's peace in knowing that it's
01:20:18: God who is the one who truly tries the reins of the human heart. And so we can only have theories about that.
01:20:27: But it seems like one that would make sense. Yeah, it does. I think that's a very, very logical, easy to understand position that I'd expect them to have.
01:20:37: Yeah. Yeah, right. Well, we're getting pretty close to the end of the program. I know that you have
01:20:43: Apologetics Live coming up. Would you just take a little bit here just to promote some of your shows, some of the things that you do?
01:20:52: That way, I can then close it out after that. Sure. And again, thank you for being on the podcast.
01:20:59: This is a good topic to have. I know that this has been more of a conversational one. It's not as structured as some of my other ones.
01:21:05: But I kind of trusted that this would go well. And it really has. And so a lot of good insights in it.
01:21:12: And I'm excited about future collaborations. But go ahead, take it away. Yeah.
01:21:17: And I can't wait for you to come on to Apologetics Live so we could talk, you know, continuationism, cessationism.
01:21:23: I got the charismatic cheetah. I was on his program, which I really appreciated. And I asked him to come on as well.
01:21:31: Let's have the discussions. It's healthy. Folks, it is healthy to talk with those who disagree.
01:21:38: Most of my friends, I don't agree with theologically. And we have some of the best discussions because it helps iron sharpening iron.
01:21:47: So, yeah, I'm with Striving for Eternity. You can find everything at strivingforeternity .org.
01:21:53: If you'd like to get my books, What Do They Believe? That's a book of the, basically, a systematic theology of the major Western religions.
01:22:01: What Do We Believe? Is a systematic theology of Christianity. It's only about 200 pages.
01:22:07: Very easy to read. Give you a good basis of understanding theology. The, I mentioned earlier, our
01:22:14: Striving for Eternity Academy. We have courses you could take for free. If you want to buy the syllabuses, those have a cost to them because they're printed.
01:22:22: You can order those. But as I mentioned, we have ones on how to interpret the Bible, systematic theology, introduction of world religions, introduction to discipleship.
01:22:32: We also do seminars. So we come to people's churches, do weekend seminars on our ambassador evangelism,
01:22:39: Bible interpretation made easy, presuppositional apologetics, because it's the best. Sorry, Adam.
01:22:45: That was a little dig. That was wrong. Hey, I remember. Stir that pot.
01:22:50: For the accumulative approach. So I think they're all the best. Yeah, that's like pan -millennialism, you know.
01:23:01: Your theology all pan out in the end, or your apologetics. Yeah. But at the end of the day,
01:23:08: I'm using the best one available. Yeah, we do weekend seminars on social justice.
01:23:15: The one I'd love to come to Adam's church and do is on cessationism. I'd love to, hey, that would be gutsy if your church invited me to do the weekend seminar on cessationism.
01:23:26: That would be, I would give kudos to your church in doing that, but it would definitely spark some great discussion.
01:23:33: I don't know about that. But yeah, we do weekend seminars.
01:23:40: We also, so we're a discipling ministry, so these are all ways we disciple. Another way we disciple is through podcasting.
01:23:46: Was already mentioned, Christian Podcast Community. You can go to christianpodcastcommunity .org and see the over 50 podcasts that are out there.
01:23:54: There's going to be something you will like, and if you like this show, well, you already like one of them that's on there.
01:24:01: So you can not only check out Bold Apologia, my podcast, Andrew Rapaport's Rap Report is a weekly podcast dealing with biblical interpretations and applications for the
01:24:13: Christian life. My Apologetics Live is one that is on Thursday nights, 8 to 10 o 'clock
01:24:18: Eastern time, and that is one where you can join in. Just go to apologeticslive .com.
01:24:24: You can join the discussion any week that we're not doing a formal debate, and you could jump in and ask me anything or challenge me.
01:24:33: I have people that come in, Orthodox Rabbi, Black Hebrew Israelites, all that come in prepared for a debate, and I didn't even know
01:24:40: I was debating that night. So that's kind of fun. I don't know the topic, but here we go. And so yeah, so when
01:24:47: Adam comes in and starts, you know, throwing some jabs at me with cessationism versus continuationism, we can, you know,
01:24:53: I won't be prepared for the debate, but he will. And so it'll be good, but Apologetics Live is a podcast, but if you want to get, like you just say,
01:25:03: I really want a lot of great Christian content on my podcasts, you can actually just go on your podcast app, search for Christian podcast community, and you will get all of those podcasts that are hosted with us.
01:25:16: Not all the podcasts that are part of us are hosted with us, but all those that are, you will get in one feed.
01:25:22: And we produce about 30 to 40 hours of content every week. So it's, you're going to have plenty to listen to if you want.
01:25:30: Yeah. Yeah. It's been an honor being part of that community. And again, an honor having you on the podcast.
01:25:38: Andrew, thank you so much. Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, especially just doubling up the way you are this week, just with having this podcast, but then
01:25:48: Apologetics Live right after. So I appreciate you doing that for me. This is the third or fourth podcast
01:25:56: I recorded this week, and none of them are from my own show. Well, it's easy to have you on as a guest.
01:26:04: So thank you for that. And I'm sure that you'll be on many more from here.
01:26:10: So yeah, again, thank you so much. And just for those of you who listen to the podcast,
01:26:16: I will be having Jay Siegert on again. Again, Jay Siegert is a
01:26:22: Christian apologist, and he travels quite a bit. He is a phenomenal guest.
01:26:29: If you listened to my podcast from a couple of podcasts ago, he was a great guest.
01:26:34: We talked about the tension between faith and science, and are they really at odds? And he had so many great answers.
01:26:41: And I'm going to be having him on at the end of May. And he will be going through just the topic of the
01:26:51: Genesis flood. And a lot of people have different ideas and views on it. And Jay Siegert is someone who can speak authoritatively on the topic.
01:27:05: And so I really look forward to going through that particular topic with him.
01:27:10: I think he's going to share just some pretty awesome information. And it'll be a good time of just going through an apologetic argument in defense of that.
01:27:24: And so anyway, hope you're looking forward to that. Again, that'll be late May. There may be a couple more podcasts popping on in between now and then just to keep some engagement going.
01:27:35: But again, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Andrew, thank you again for being on the podcast.
01:27:43: Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Absolutely. And listeners, we'll see you at the next one.