Jeff Durbin Responds To Atheist Debate

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00:38

Alright guys, welcome back to another episode of Next Week with Jeff Durbin. I am Jeff Durbin, thank you for joining us for the show tonight.

00:43

We have a good show planned for you guys tonight. That is Luke the Bear. What up? What up? And let's get right to it. So some of you guys may have seen recently at Apologia Studios channel on YouTube and Apologia Studios on Facebook, we had a debate with two atheists.

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Is that what that was? Yeah, well, it was a formal debate. I could have swore we were at a Jerry Springer taping.

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Yeah, well that was the banter going around, it was Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. So that was my fault.

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I think I started that chant. Did you? Oh, you were the one that started it. I figured you'd do something like that. So we were in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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Apologia Church went, and I think this is our biggest, busiest week we've had yet.

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We've traveled around the world, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. We've been all over the world, and we've had very busy ministry, but we usually don't have as much happening all at once or in one day.

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We had some days where we were doing evangelism on the street, and then we had a debate that night.

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And so, so much was taking place. But we went to, well, we first kind of broke up into teams.

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We filmed some stuff for EndAbortionNow, endabortionnow .com is where you go to get your church registered, to get free training, get free resources, to get equipped to grow in the gospel, to the abortion mills.

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And so we had two different teams, two different nights going through Las Vegas and filming content for EndAbortionNow in Las Vegas, which we have churches in Nevada who are saving lives even today.

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And then we were able to do some interviews with Gerald, sorry, Sandra Tanner, and with Bill McKeever at Utah Lighthouse Ministry.

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And they, if you don't know who they are, they are some of the greatest ministers in the area of Mormonism.

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And Sandra Tanner and Gerald Tanner, her husband, who has since gone to be with the Lord, have produced a lot of materials for the

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Christian church to bring the gospel to Mormons. As a matter of fact, when I first started engaging with the issue of Mormonism, I remember being 17 years old.

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I was sitting in high school. I actually got reprimanded numerous times and sent to the office for reading

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Sandra Tanner's books in class. So it was interesting for me to be able to sit with her and to get her testimony and to talk to her about the history of Mormonism.

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We're doing a documentary right now on Mormonism to equip the current church to engage with current modern

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Mormonism. And so that's what we were doing at the Utah Lighthouse Ministry. And then the next day we had a debate with atheists at the

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University of Idaho. Utah. Sorry, Utah. Man, it's been a long week.

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Rock State. Yeah, that's right. So then Dr. White had a dialogue, public dialogue discussion the next night with Alma Allred, who used to be a bishop, is a professor and instructor at the

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Religious Institute. And then we had the next day conference, we were doing evangelism on the street, preaching the gospel.

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And then that night was another debate with Lee Baker, who was a professing

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Mormon that converted to evangelical Christianity and then converted recently to Judaism.

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Very strange strand of Judaism. A form of Judaism. And so we had a very busy week.

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So lots to talk about, but we thought we would spend this episode going through the debate that we had at the

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University of Utah. So our opponents were Dr. Clark and Dan Ellis.

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Dan Ellis was the president of the Utah Atheists, I'm saying that right,

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Utah Atheist Society or something to that effect. Now he is the state representative for American Atheists.

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If you don't know, American Atheists is one of, it's probably the second largest atheist organization on the planet.

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So ahead of that would be Barker's organization. And then

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I think American Atheists would come after that. So significant organization. These guys were not schlubs.

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They are atheists that know atheism and they are intensely committed to their atheisms.

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And so... Good way to put it. I would say, here's my point, is that yeah, the way they behaved in the debate, now

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I take it back. Let me make sure I'm respectful and proper about this. Dan Ellis, I think, generally behaved himself during the debate.

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But Dr. Clark did not. Thank you, David. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Dr. Clark. Thank you for being here.

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Just show me. God bless you. Show me. You've seen the oracles. Show me.

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Show me. Show me. What you got, dude? What you got? What you got? You are the most angry man I've ever met.

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I feel for you. I really feel sorry for you. Now, if anybody would like to say, like, these guys aren't good representatives of atheism, we'll tell that to American Atheists and Utah Atheist Society and all the rest,

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Dr. Clark is not a schlub. He is a very intelligent man. He's a brilliant man.

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As a matter of fact, he is doing work in the area of prosthetics that is incredible.

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If you listen to his testimony video where he first spends the first half an hour railing against God, using foul language and all the rest, basically, the man you saw show up to the debate was actually tempered compared to what you see in his other public talk at the

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Utah Atheist Society thing. But in that discussion, he actually switches personalities where he goes from very intense, angry, cursing, hating

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God, vile discussion to then turning into a man that you can really respect and appreciate, who's working with prosthetics and people who are amputees that have lost limbs in accidents and those sorts of things, so that they can actually pick objects up and even feel them with these prosthetics.

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The guy is a very, very brilliant man. However, atheism, not so brilliant.

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And when you deny your creator, when you deny the God who is, you are going to be forced into a place where you are going to have to accept blind faith.

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You're going to have to accept pure, sheer, ignorant faith at times in your life.

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You're going to not have a justification that's coherent or meaningful in the area of the uniformity in nature, which is absolutely necessary for the scientific method.

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You're not going to have a basis for laws of logic. You're not going to have a basis for human ethics and responsibilities.

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I'll give you an example of what I mean by that. I don't know if you caught this. In the closing statement, we're going to get to what

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Dr. Clark did in the closing statement, which is very entertaining. It's going to get us a lot of YouTube views. Yes.

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Carmen was saying, all I was seeing was a new camera, because it's going to be,

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I think, seen far and wide by a lot of people. But Dr. Clark argues that he doesn't know why the future will be like the past, which is the basis of science.

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So he accepted it by blind faith. And essentially, when someone challenged him on why do you believe the scientific method works, his answer was essentially, philosophically speaking, just because.

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That was his answer. But he said something interesting at the very end that, of course, we were in the audience question section after that, and so I didn't get much of a time to respond to this.

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But he said to everyone in the audience, you don't have the decency to admit such and such.

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Because there's not a single one of you who has the decency to admit that that's nonsense, or the decency to actually show what you believe.

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So what I thought was interesting is here you have a man that believes that we are all in a universe that has no goal -oriented forces.

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We're in a universe where all of us are the descendants of bacteria, that there is no meaning, there is no purpose, there's no foundation for ethics, all those things.

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But he chastises the audience for not having the decency, as though decency is required amongst protoplasm, right?

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And so that's what took place. So you and I haven't literally not even got a chance to speak about the debate yet.

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So tell me from the audience perspective, what was going on? Well, I literally, it was, I mean, it started off, well, you and Dr.

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White started off fine, but then when it came to Dr. Clark, it was just immediately, it was just like, what is happening right now?

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Like he just, he gets up, gets the mic, like he's like a word of faith pastor marching across the stage.

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He's in your guys' faces, pointing, it was just like, what in the world? But is this, so that's, it literally felt like someone was gonna get in a fight, like it was a

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Jerry Springer show, and at one point I actually thought, I was afraid that things were gonna completely unravel, because the audience is getting rowdy, they're shouting stuff, and I thought

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Jason Wallace did a great job of keeping it together. Well, just to that point, what was interesting, I found was that there were two debates that week.

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One was with Dr. Clark and Dan Ellis, the atheists, one was with Lee Baker, the apostate, the best way

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I can describe him. That's a good way. And in both those debates, I saw something that I have never, ever seen before in a debate.

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And I mean that sincerely, I have not seen this before. I've seen before a comment before from Dan Barker, who's a pretty rowdy atheist.

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He'll make a single comment to the audience sort of a thing. But I've never seen what we saw in that week, and that is that in both nights, our opponents actually were trying to get into an argument with the audience, like a fight with the audience, both nights.

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Translator riot. Yeah, like basically fighting the audience. And I've always thought when you go to a debate before a public audience, you're supposed to have a certain level of decorum.

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You're supposed to have a certain level of respect and those sorts of things. And even though atheists don't have a basis for that, I would think that they anticipate that going in.

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But one thing you wanna do is you're essentially trying to argue for the benefit of the audience.

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The audience are the judges of the debate. That's supposed to be, unless we have judges scoring.

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When you don't have judges scoring, the audience, they're the judges of the debate. And so it seems an odd strategy to me to actually then make the audience your enemy and start going after the audience.

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That happened on both nights. Absolutely, yeah. And so I saw people that were complaining on the live theater after the fact.

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It was a circus, or why didn't Jason step in sooner, or whatever, just stuff like that.

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And I thought he kept it at a good place where, and I know James said this, where it really exposed them for who they are.

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So Jason let it go on just long enough where they threw all their cards for everyone to see, you knew who they were.

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I mean, they very well played the role of atheists.

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And so, and then it got to a point where Jason was like, all right, that's enough is enough. But I thought that was great, that's what you get in atheism.

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It doesn't, in the end, it's nothing that makes sense. They were completely contradicting the stuff they were saying, and it was just, you saw their anger against God, and that's where they're coming from.

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You saw the wheels come off a number of times, and the convoluted contradictory statements that would happen back and forth.

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For example, Dan Ellis took exception to the fact that I was saying that, in the cross -examination,

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I essentially asked him, you believe fish become philosophers? That's one thing I wrote down, yeah. And he said, no, fish don't become philosophers.

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Now, if he accepts neo -Darwinian micromutation, macro -evolutionary

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Darwinianism. If he accepts that, then yes, he does believe that somewhere long past in the chain that his ancestors were fish.

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So ultimately, and I even specified, I said, you believe that somewhere in the chain long ago, your ancestors were fish.

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At first, he's denying it, and finally, I press him, and he says, well, yes, I believe that. I said, so you do believe your ancestors were fish?

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He says, yes. So you do believe your ancestors were fish? Yes, so we finally, we have that down now. Good, thank you, Dan. So he goes on the one hand and says, no,

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I don't believe that, too. Yes, I believe that. But what's interesting is that when he was challenged on the point of ethics, if your ancestors were fish,

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I said to him, do you eat fish? Right. And he says, yes, I do. And I said, can you explain to me the distinction between the one thing that you eat in this random universe and other human beings that you say have value and dignity?

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You protect this class, you draw a circle around humanity now. But you're eating this other aspect of evolution, right?

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So where's the distinction? So you eat fish, which our ancestors were fish, but so you've drawn a smaller circle around this group over here that's evolved randomly to mutate to this perspective, to this position over here.

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And there's no justification at that point. So you ask the question, you eat fish, how come you don't eat babies?

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Right. Right, and you can't just say, well, that's gross. Yeah. Or I don't want to.

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Like when you say, well, okay, so give me the argument against the cannibals that do eat other human beings.

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As an atheist, what's your argument against those cannibals? See, they've drawn a smaller circle around their tribe, and what they think is that they can kill and eat other people from other tribes.

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It's just a smaller circle. Right. But you've done the same thing as an atheist. You just drew a smaller circle around humanity, and you said you can eat all these other evolutionary results of, or all these other results of evolution.

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So you have to ask the atheists, do you have a coherent response? Not just, just cuz.

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Yeah. So he says. Rationality. Rationality. Now, Dan, do you eat fish? Yes, I do.

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Okay, Dan, if you have ancestors who are fish, and you eat fish today, let me ask you a question.

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What's the distinction between you and other random results of evolutionary processes? Why do you uphold human value and dignity above, say, snails, horses, dogs, and rocks?

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Well, I have yet to see a horse that could reason as well as I can. He says, well, you know, well, I've never met a horse that can reason like me.

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Well, you know, that sounds cute at first, but you have to challenge it. You have to say, okay, so what you're saying is, is that if something reasons better, if it has a higher level of reasoning, better, more consistent reasoning.

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Yeah. Then it's more valuable and ought to be protected. That's a really dangerous position to take.

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Because, you know what? I know some people that can't reason very well. Right. Right? Like those atheists in the debate.

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And so - Exactly. So what I say to them in the cross examination, and we'll probably play that in this episode,

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I essentially challenge them on that point. So if it reasons better, we should protect it.

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Yeah. So is it morally responsible or good to draw a circle around your group and say, we reason better than these guys.

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So therefore, it's okay for us morally to exterminate them. And he essentially said -

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I don't know. Well, I'd have to, I'd have to hear the arguments for that position. Well, he said we needed an empirical method to test it.

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Yeah. There he goes back to his science. He wants to, he wants to, well, you know, maybe. Yeah. You say if it reasons better, it has more value.

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What if a segment of humanity grows large and draws a smaller circle around themselves and say, we reason better than your group, therefore we'll exterminate you.

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Are they right for doing that? I think we would need to be able to have a way to test those claims. And they would have to be able to demonstrate that their claims are more correct.

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That's how we do that. It is possible for a segment of humanity to draw a smaller circle around their group and exterminate other groups.

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Not only is it possible, we see it happen way too often. Right. Is it wrong? Yeah, I believe it is.

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So at that point, the question becomes, okay, as an atheist then, what's your argument with Auschwitz?

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Right. Because if you listen to the arguments from the Nazis and the kinds of things that they were saying, they were saying that Jews essentially were on a lower class of humanity, that we can exterminate

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Jews and all these other people like disabled people and all the rest, because they're not quite where we're at today.

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They're like beasts, right? And so I can kill beasts. I can kill these kinds of creatures that are beneath me.

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So here is a more highly evolved class of the human species. And here is a less evolved class of the human species.

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So there's no moral problem in me exterminating this class down here. Why? Well, I reason better.

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Nazis are better looking, I guess. I don't know, maybe whatever the disgusting, disgraceful arguments that they made, the fact is that they made them.

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So if you ask the materialist, the atheist who believes all that exists is the material universe, you ask him, okay, now, let me hear your arguments.

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Let me hear you argue against Stalin. Don't borrow capital from a Christian society that you live in, that accepts that human beings are the image of God and have value and dignity and worth, that murdering innocent human beings is wrong.

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There's an ethical problem with that. Don't borrow from the Christian worldview and all the benefits and capital that you have from our nation, which was established with so many different Christian worldview parts.

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Give me an answer. What's your argument against Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot?

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Give me your argument against these atheist regimes. And I don't think there is one.

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Yeah, he literally said, I don't know. Right. I love how you went a little Bonson -Stein on him.

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With, we were talking about our ethics and laws of logic, material, and nature.

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And he wouldn't even say that. He kept saying, well, yes, there are concepts.

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After he admitted he's a materialist, he has their concepts, but he wouldn't admit that they were immaterial. But then when you really press him on it, he literally said,

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I don't know. Yes. I don't know where they, I don't know how. Laws of logic, do they exist, are they real?

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I just told you, I think they're abstract concepts. Okay, are these abstract concepts, things that humans by convention have merely stipulated?

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Or are they things that exist as - Would they be true without human beings? There you go. I believe that they would be.

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Yeah, I believe that they would be here whether human beings were here or not. But, I mean, if they were here and no human was around to observe them, then it's,

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I mean, it's a fun thing to think about. Thank you, Dan. I appreciate that very much. So, what would be your justification for appealing to immaterial abstract universals given your materialism?

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Can you ask me that again? Sure, as an atheist, I assume you're a materialist? Yes. Okay, so you believe all that exists is matter?

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That's all that I've been able to have any demonstration for. Okay, so on what basis are you holding to immaterial laws?

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Cuz you just said you believe the laws of logic are immaterial, so where'd they come from? I believe numbers are immaterial also, but I also believe that they are useful and exist.

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And we agree. Then where'd they come from? Yeah, so where'd they come from? From human thought. So they are merely conventional.

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What do you mean by merely conventional? Human beings convene and stipulate what a law of logic or a law of arithmetic is.

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No, I just told you that I believe the laws of logic would be around whether humans created them or thought of them or were around to recognize them or not.

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I appreciate that. Exactly, and so if the audience wants to know what we're getting at when we say that, the topic of the debate was the triune

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God exists. So the triune God of scripture exists. Now notice what the debate was not about.

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The debate, and this is one of the things Dr. Clark couldn't, he couldn't understand this category. The debate was not about is

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God triune? Right. So he was like upset, like we're not defending whether God is triune.

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It's because it's in the premise of the debate. The triune God exists, which means that the assumption is,

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God is triune, does the triune God exist? It wasn't, is God triune? So he couldn't understand that category distinction, and so he had a problem with that.

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But our perspective is that God has spoken, he's revealed himself in creation and conscience.

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He's revealed himself specially in history in his word, giving his self a testing word, and he of course supremely has revealed himself in Jesus Christ and the incarnation in history.

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And so what we've said is that because the triune God exists, and he's revealed himself to us, this is what the triune

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God says about the world. He says he's sovereign over it, that he carries it along to its intended destination.

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All of history then has purpose and meaning. Human beings are uniquely created by God, and so they're in the image of God and have value and dignity.

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That's what you get with the triune God, because he says I am, and this is what I've done in the world, and this is my law.

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So we have a basis for ethical values and absolute oughts, and an ethical system.

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And it's all based upon the character of God. He makes no appeals, the triune God makes no appeals above himself.

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So if you were to say, for example, God, give me a reason that this is ethically right and this is ethically wrong.

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He wouldn't appeal outside of himself because of this thing over here, or because of this reason over there.

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He would appeal to his own nature and character. Why is it absolutely wrong? Well, because God is love.

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Love does no harm to its neighbor. So there's the point. So from a Christian perspective, you have a basis for ethics.

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Absolute oughts and ethics that are true outside of my own preferences, my subjective reasoning, my own sense perception.

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They're true outside of my own community and my own experience. We have ethical absolutes that exist objectively outside of ourselves.

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We also have a basis in the Christian worldview with the triune God who exists for immaterial, universal laws like the laws of logic or the laws of arithmetic.

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Now, I wanted to say this to our audiences here right now and to the audience who's watching this later on. I want you to think very, very hard about this.

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Because I'm glad you brought this up because it was a huge part of the discussion. And I think Christians many times don't realize the power of the

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Christian worldview at this particular point, that nothing can move past this point without the triune

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God. Because you can't justify coherently and appeal to logical consistency outside of the triune

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God with certainty. Now, it's not saying atheists don't reason. It's not saying that atheists don't attempt to reason and justify their reasoning.

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It's saying that with their atheism, they shouldn't be. And they don't have a coherent appeal to reason.

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But let's just consider this. Atheists assume always, and I thought about this.

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I'm like, I really wish that I had thought about this in the debate because it was huge. I remember for years driving to Las Vegas for different things.

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I have family in Vegas, and we've done things in Vegas to film and things like that. I remember years ago, going to Vegas, you had to drive through the desert forever, which you still do.

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But I remember that all along the way, you see speed signs, right?

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And that's for the speed limits. And it'll say 65 at some points. It'll say 75 at some points, 55, 45, construction, it'll drop down to 25.

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That happened the whole way home and there this time. But there's a speed limit, and there's numbers on that sign, right?

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And what would be intellectually inept is if I was going 110, miles per hour on that road, and a police officer pulls me over and says, no, there's signs here that say it's 65 miles per hour.

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I can't say, well, officer, we live in a universe that's only made of matter.

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And what is arithmetic? Are there laws of numbers that exist out in nature?

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See, that sign, I can go touch 65 on that sign. As a matter of fact, I can tear that sign down and throw it over the thing, and it could break down at the bottom.

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And I've now taken 65 out of existence. The officer would go, no, dummy, 65, you're not gonna take, if you took every sign of 65 down, 65 still exists.

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Because it's an immaterial, universal reality of 65 that's a concept that is law in the universe fixed, and it's not made of matter.

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The number on the sign is only a representation of that truth of 65 -ness.

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So going 110 -ness is very different than going 65 -ness, right?

25:49

Now here's the point. As you drive through the desert to get to Vegas, you also do something different, which we've done differently now.

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And I'm so thankful for it, because it takes about an hour and a half off your time. It used to be you had to drive all the way down to the

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Hoover Dam. And you had to wait in this long line to the Hoover Dam as everyone's looking over the edge and taking pictures and all the rest, just to get down there, through there in this slow traffic, then get all the way up, climb up the mountain again, and get into Vegas.

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It's like an hour and a half a time. Thankfully, and I'm sure there was monetary reasons for this for Vegas.

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Vegas is like, yeah, sure, we'll invest in that road. Yeah, no kidding. Get people here to spend their money. They have built a bridge that goes between two mountains.

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And did you ever go down to the bottom of Hoover Dam and look up where they're building that bridge? Well, we went that first time.

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We saw when they were building it. Terrifying. It's very terrifying. It's so high up. It is scary.

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I am so thankful to God, and I mean this, that when you cross over that bridge, you don't really know it, because they have the high walls there.

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Because if most people knew what they were driving over, they would be crashing off the edge from passing out and fainting.

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But what I thought was interesting is that here we're in a debate about all these different concepts and truths, and atheists cross that bridge.

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And what's amazing about that is that the men and women who were behind building that bridge and had to put together all the math down to the centimeter, literally.

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If you're in Europe. Yeah, okay, am I using the wrong numbers? Okay, the people who did that didn't do it with the assumption, these aren't really laws that exist out of nature.

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These are just, we just create these in our own minds. They could change 100 years from now, maybe 65 or something different 100 years from now.

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Here's the point, because you brought it up. When Dan Ellis' challenge at the point of, give me a justification within atheism, because all you believe exists is matter in motion.

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You're just a materialist. All that exists is matter. Stuff, right? Atoms banging around. Give me a justification for universal, immaterial, unchanging laws like laws of logic or laws of arithmetic.

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Now Dan's interesting response, and there's only so many ways you can go as an atheist.

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Here's the thing. Atheists only have so many options available, right? They can say what

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Dr. Clark said, just cuz, right? Okay, fine, just cuz.

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So we do not claim complete certainty. And I can show you my paper, that's not what we do, right?

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We say that this is very likely or very unlikely. We don't go to p equals one.

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We don't go to p equals zero except within rounding error, okay? And science works, right?

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Religion doesn't. Great, Jesus is God, just cuz, right? I mean, come on, are we really gonna reason like that?

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He wouldn't accept that from me, but he wants everyone to accept it from him. But the atheist challenged on universals and immaterials and laws like logic or arithmetic only has the option of saying, okay, well, how about this?

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These laws exist because our brains are fizzing neurologically and we've created these class concepts in human brains, okay?

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And it's because they're just fizzing chemically. Yeah. That's where these laws have come from. You better hope not, because if the laws only exist in human brains that are fizzing.

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Right. Neurological chemicals randomly. Here's the deal, none of us have the same brain. Exactly. All of our brains are our brains, right?

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And they're all fizzing. Neurological chemicals and responses all differently. And if numbers and laws of logic are merely the result of brain fizz, then all you have is the brain fizz of one

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African ape compared to the brain fizz of another, and that's not law -like, and neither is it universal.

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It's just fizz. Right. Now, you also have the idea, which I think Dan was getting at, which

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I asked him. I said, so are laws of logic conventional? And he didn't know what that meant.

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I was really surprised at that point where he literally - He didn't know that. He had no idea what you were trying to say.

30:09

He hadn't thought through this. Yeah, and you tried four or five times to explain to him, and he literally was just kind of - He still couldn't get it.

30:15

Yeah. So you have the other option, just to sort of broaden the brain fizz thing, and say, well, it's a lot of us getting together to convene, to, by convention, stipulate, this is the law of logic.

30:28

This is the law of five, right? And so that's stipulated. In other words, it's another example of just cause.

30:34

Yeah. But now it's a lot of African apes getting together saying, just cause, right? Yeah. So it's by convention.

30:39

We just merely stipulate it. We'll say, this is this law of arithmetic here, and this is this law of non -contradiction.

30:47

Well, the question is, if human beings merely stipulate laws of logic and laws of arithmetic, can they change five years from now?

30:54

Do they change by the African apes in New Zealand coming together by convention versus the

31:01

African apes in the United States by convention? Like, are laws of logic universal in that sense? They couldn't be universal because it's by convention.

31:08

In other words, we're all just deciding. So I'll give you another example of by convention today. This is a rudimentary example.

31:15

We've decided by convention today that human beings ought to be able to marry somebody of the same sex.

31:23

That's ethical and moral. And we've determined that morality by convention. We decide, right?

31:29

But 15 years ago, it was against the law in most places, right? So by convention here, you shouldn't be able to marry.

31:36

And by convention here, you should. That's by convention. Now watch, that's a moral question. Now if by convention can change every 15 years morally, by convention can the laws of arithmetic change every 15 years?

31:50

If it's by convention, yes, it can. Now, atheists don't have a justification for the laws of logic or the laws of arithmetic.

31:59

But here's the crazy thing. Atheists sometimes are better at arithmetic than Christians.

32:07

Many times, atheists build bridges. Atheists build skyscrapers.

32:14

But here's the point, for an atheist to build a bridge, or to build a skyscraper, or to build a vehicle, or to make machinery in some sense that's gonna carry a family across the country in a vehicle or in an airplane, they have to -

32:28

Or a prosthetic arm. Or a prosthetic arm. They have to abandon their atheistic assumptions and presuppositions, their pre -commitments, and put one foot or both feet into the

32:38

Christian worldview to borrow things that only make sense with a triune God. And then they have to abandon those commitments back to the profession of atheism.

32:47

Yeah. So. Yeah, which is what, well, Dr. Clark was a whole nother, we'll still get to that, but I did appreciate it.

32:56

I think at some point Dan Ellis was trying to reason and then he just gave up, he just -

33:05

After pressing him enough, he just gave up. And he literally, because at the end, he literally was just like, it was almost like he was like, here you go,

33:12

Dr. Clark, just have at it. Have at it, yeah. And he just kind of sat back and was probably embarrassed, honestly. He did,

33:18

I appreciated Dan, that he seemed to try to keep the level of decorum and respect higher.

33:27

And I do think that you and I could hang out with Dan Ellis and probably have a good time.

33:33

Yeah. Over dinner. He had a great beard. Yeah, he had a wonderful beard. I think he's our kind of guy. Yeah. I think we'd probably enjoy hanging out.

33:40

Yeah, I agree, I agree. And Dan, if you ever come to Phoenix, we'll take you out to dinner and have some fish and chips.

33:48

Dr. Clark, that's another story. So, that took a second for everyone to get the have some fish and chips.

33:54

So - I didn't even catch it. You didn't catch it? No, yeah. Okay, okay. So, there was a moment,

34:00

I'll let you introduce it. What happened in the closing statement? Well, okay. So, first, before we get to that,

34:07

I was gonna say - Okay. I think there were a lot more atheists there than we realized at the beginning.

34:15

But then after Dr. Clark's opening statements, I think it was Dan, wasn't it?

34:21

It was Dan, right? When he first had a chance to speak, he was like, how many people here are atheists? Yes. And there was like five people.

34:28

They raised their hands. And I think I saw some atheist army crawling maybe out the back. Yeah. Not me. Right. And then

34:34

I think after break, I saw people that had atheist shirts. Their tags were shown and their shirts were flipped inside out. It was weird.

34:40

But yeah, so like that, it just, it was, I think by the time it got to the end, anybody there that was an atheist either left or was just like,

34:48

I'm embarrassed. Atheists did actually leave. Yeah. In the middle of the debate. I'm sure they did, yeah.

34:54

I didn't catch it, but I'm sure they did. A Mormon left because of the disrespect from Dr. Clark, but.

35:00

And what happened was Dr. Clark was throwing a Bible, a Book of Mormon, and a Koran into the trash.

35:06

He tried to throw it in the trash. He missed every time. And missed horribly. Yes. Yes. Because of the uniformity in nature and the law -like nature of precision in throwing

35:14

Bibles in the trashes, he just missed. I mean, he was being inconsistent atheists, I guess. There you go, yeah. So, okay, so the thing,

35:22

I mean, the whole thing, with him was just a circus, a train wreck with Dr. Clark. Every time he got a chance to speak.

35:28

But the end, I can't even say it without laughing. So he literally get, well, first of all,

35:35

I, let me backtrack. Before, at the very beginning, he got mad at Dr. White, because Dr. White held up his iPad and showed a -

35:42

A picture. A papyri. Yeah. And then he was like, there is no, we're not allowed to have any, what was he, what was the word he, no,

35:50

I just - Visual. Yeah, visual aids or whatever. Visual aids. He was mad because he had a visual aid, you know, and so then he gets out his whole thing and he's throwing stuff in the, or in the trash.

35:58

So he had visual, what, what, what we had understood. Yeah. No visual aids, as we agreed to no keynote presentations.

36:04

Right. And Dr. White held his iPad up for a second. But Clark also had visual aids in his presentation by throwing

36:12

Bibles and Book of Mormon and all that stuff. Yeah, I mean, he was like Mary Poppins. He had like a bag, he just kept pulling stuff out.

36:18

He did, yeah. So, at the end, he pulls out then the, the antifreeze. Prestone, antifreeze.

36:23

The Prestone, and he's, and he poured a glass of it. And so his whole thing was he wants the challenge of Christians, like if you really believe in God, that he can perform miracles.

36:33

And he's challenging you guys and anybody in the audience to drink this. And and so I, I told

36:40

Dr. White afterwards, here's, here's a theological grenade, ready? So I said, I was like, if I was on stage,

36:45

I would have said, if you drink that Prestone, Theon, you're going to be face to face with your creator in about five minutes.

36:51

When you guys get that, let me know. Yeah. So, that's, that's, that's, yeah, that requires, that requires the knowledge of Koine Greeks.

36:59

It's a high level theological nerd joke. Okay. And so I'm watching this, and I'm just like,

37:06

I'm watching you guys, you're like kind of giggling, and I'm like, part, so half of me is like, I kind of hope he drinks that, because it's going to be crazy.

37:15

It's going to be really interesting if he does it. Then the other half is like, I probably shouldn't wish for that. Probably, probably shouldn't drink that.

37:21

Sanctification was happening in that moment, yes. But I was like, oh, please, please drink, anyways.

37:26

So, of course, there was some dummy in the audience that stands up like, I'll drink it. Someone stood up in the back, and you'll see me, if you watch the debate, go watch the debate, you'll see at the, during the, during the closing statement when he does that, you'll see me go like this, like that, to the back.

37:41

I was telling the, the young man to sit down, because he stood up like, fine, I'll do it, and I was like, no, sit down.

37:48

Yeah, so he's, I mean, he's going back and forth with this thing. He's shaking, it's splashing.

37:54

He was spilling it on the floor, which I'm sure that it probably stained the carpet. Yeah, and it was just, I mean, it was,

37:59

I've never seen anything like it. Every single one of you knows that it is nonsense that your

38:04

Lord Jesus Christ has no more power than Godzilla. And if you want to debate that, don't just flap your lips.

38:14

Come up here in front of this entire audience and show your faith.

38:20

Show the signs of those who have believed, because there's no reason to believe you if you just flap your lips and don't practice what you preach.

38:32

So what, we need to talk about that point. Yeah. Because miracles was a big issue for Dr.

38:37

Clark. Big time. So what, okay, let's start at the beginning. He says, if I can't observe it, it isn't true.

38:45

Now let's stand there for a second because you're going to hear this as a Christian. Someone says, if I can't observe something,

38:51

I only know things by observation. So if someone makes that claim, you can only know something by observation.

38:57

You just need to ask this question to the person. How much have you observed?

39:05

How much of true knowledge in the universe or in the world today have you observed? And a person will say, well, almost nothing.

39:13

So you know almost nothing, right? If somebody says, no, no, no, no. I'm saying based on the things that I do know,

39:20

I only know them by observation. And that's not true because the person who believes in that kind of epistemology, who believes that you only know things by observation, has actually only really observed very little of their knowledge.

39:33

So for example, if you go into a science classroom and somebody says, hey, we've done these things before and it's been done in the past.

39:41

Well, you didn't observe that. You're taking it on somebody's authority that they're giving you the straight scoop, that they're being honest.

39:47

Honesty matters, right? Like that actually counts. And where does honesty exist? Right, exactly. Is honesty something that we're all supposed to hold to?

39:54

Like you're essentially granting that this person has got to be giving me the straight scoop. They're not lying through their teeth to me.

40:00

But even in that case, you haven't tested and observed every claim. So you accept things by faith and you accept things based upon somebody else's authority or testimony.

40:10

So when someone says, I only know things by observation, they don't really live that way. But there's more.

40:16

And this is where it gets to another layer. When someone says, I only know things based upon empiricism, that's what observation means.

40:22

Empirical. I have to see it, taste it, touch it, all that stuff. I've got to test this thing. Observation and empiricism.

40:29

Well, Dr. Clark was pretending to be an empiricist on stage. Here's the problem. If you only know things by observation,

40:36

I have a question. Well, you believe you're an African ape with a three pound brain fizzing in a universe that doesn't care about you, like Dr.

40:44

Will Provine says, who's a famous atheist. He says there's no goal oriented forces and there's no ultimate foundation for ethics.

40:52

So the question I have for that atheist who says you only know things by observation is this. How do you know you can trust your sense experience?

41:00

Right. Like there's more to this than just saying, give it to me, I got to test it. You're operating like you're a

41:06

Christian. A Christian worldview says, I want evidence. I want proof. This nature is uniform.

41:13

Laws of logic matter. You are required to be honest when you provide evidence for things. Show me that it's the truth.

41:19

It has to be objective. It has to be real. It has to be true. That's how Christians reason. That's why

41:24

Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Brown University, all these universities, they didn't start off as atheists and atheistic institutions,

41:31

Princeton. These were not atheistic institutions. They were Christian seminaries and Christian institutions.

41:37

Why? Because it's the Christian worldview that gives rise to science. It's the Christian worldview that gave science its massive pop.

41:45

Without the Christian worldview, you wouldn't have a cell phone. That's literally the truth.

41:50

That's a fact. The person who gave us the technology for cell phones and all they're using today and all the

41:56

Internet and everything you have is because of Christianity. So you're welcome. He was also a Calvinist, by the way.

42:01

So hashtag Calvinism. So but here's the point. If somebody says you only know things based upon observation, they don't they don't act like that because they haven't observed everything.

42:11

Also, you can't trust your sense experience. You can't. But if somebody says miracles are silly, stupid things, you have to you got to press it a little bit more.

42:22

You're going to say, hey, why are miracles so weird? Now, just explain to me why miracles are weird in the world.

42:28

And somebody says, because because universe is law like. Right. Because everything is fixed.

42:35

It's a uniform because the future will be like the past. We don't see these crazy things happening in the world because the universe is uniform.

42:43

Oh, so the universe operates in the universe, you know, in a uniform fashion. The principle of induction holds the future will be like the past.

42:51

So at that point, watch when the atheist brings up miracles as a challenge against the

42:56

Christian worldview, he's now left a universe of chaos, time and chance acting on matter with no goal oriented forces.

43:04

And now he stepped into the Christian worldview as though there were a sovereign God holding all this together.

43:10

Right. Right. So when the atheist uses miracles against the Christian worldview, he has to step into the

43:16

Christian worldview and gather capital, stick it into his pockets and run back over to atheism and start making fun of the

43:22

Christian. So what I said to them was, it's not weird that dead men rise in your world.

43:28

Right. It's weird in my world. Exactly. The Christian worldview forms the foundation to say that miracles are strange.

43:35

Like, for example, when the sun from a phenomenological perspective, this Bible speaks in phenomenological language.

43:42

The sun stands still in the sky. That's not giving an that's not giving you a description of cosmology and how the universe works and rotation of planets and revolutions around the sun.

43:52

It's giving you the phenomenological language of the sun stood still in the sky. That was weird.

43:57

Yeah, because it's not supposed to be like that at all. And from a Christian worldview, everyone's supposed to stop and go.

44:03

Now, this is God feeding a new event into this ordered universe.

44:09

What is he doing? What is he saying? And what Dr. White was explaining was miracles are strange in our worldview, but God establishes miracles in history, observable, real miracles in history to establish the veracity of his word and testimony with his covenant people and with the onlookers.

44:28

This is what's powerful. Check this out. He says, I need to see it. I want this stuff to happen in real time and real history.

44:35

The point of the Christian worldview is it's been done. Right. Right. Think about it for a moment.

44:42

The atheist is a hypocrite at this point. Who's an empiricist? He's such a hypocrite. He says, we only know things based upon observation.

44:50

It's got to be tested. We've got to see it. We've got to observe it. Ask him the question. Have you observed every scientific test that you take for granted now?

44:59

No, I haven't observed it. So what are you basing it off of when you accept a scientific test that's been observed in the past?

45:05

What are you basing your acceptance on? Well, the witnesses who are there. Fantastic. That's exactly what we have for the

45:12

Christian worldview. God fed an observable, miraculous event into real history.

45:18

And we have actual witnesses who observed it. Now, you don't like their testimony. You don't want to buy it.

45:24

But the point is, is that when you say we only know things based upon observation, the point of the Christian worldview is it's been done.

45:31

And the atheist has no basis to complain in the first place about miracles. So, of course, there was also the problem that this atheist,

45:41

Dr. Clark, didn't understand the issue of textual criticism. By the way, he also wasn't telling the truth in the debate.

45:48

Not that he had to as an atheist, but he wasn't telling the truth. We didn't agree to a debate on is

45:54

God triune, which he fudged, but he also said this. We agree to a debate on does the triune

46:01

God of Scripture exist and the inerrancy of the Bible? No, we didn't.

46:06

Those are two debates. I miss it. If he would have liked to have done a debate on the inerrancy of Scripture, we could have done that.

46:11

Yeah, but that's a separate issue. He said we were supposed to debate those two things. No, we weren't. It was it was only one proposition.

46:17

The triune God of Scripture exists. That's all that we agreed to. But he didn't understand. This is important for Christians to know this.

46:24

As a matter of fact, if you're a Christian watching this right now and even to our audience, if you don't know the history of how the glorious history of how

46:33

God preserved his word in history through his people and what we have today and how we get our

46:39

Bibles today, I want to strongly encourage you to get to know how we got our Bibles. A great book for that is

46:45

Dr. White's book. It's called The King James Only Controversy. It's not just about the

46:50

King James issue on English translation. It's actually about how we get our Bibles. And it's incredible.

46:56

And Dr. Clark didn't know. He didn't understand the issue of textual criticism. He didn't understand our

47:02

Bibles. He actually quoted the longer ending of Mark in Mark 16 about drinking poison.

47:10

And he was like, well, these are the words of Jesus. And so drink up, y 'all. And there's a couple of problems with that from a

47:17

Christian perspective and just in terms of just granting his premise. Just grant his premise that that was said and we're supposed to drink poison.

47:24

We can drink poison and it won't harm us. Well, the point is, is the generation between the ascension of Jesus and the destruction of the temple.

47:31

It was prophesied in Joel 2 and quoted in Acts chapter 2 by Peter that that last generation before the destruction of the old covenant was going to be filled with all kinds of signs and wonders and prophecy as a sign to the covenant people that they were about to be judged and that salvation had arrived in Messiah.

47:49

So even granting the premise that that promise is made of the healing, the sick and drinking poison, that was for a specific time period granting the premise.

47:58

However, no, the longer ending of Mark doesn't show up into the tradition of the transmission of the text until much later.

48:08

And the issue of inerrancy has to do with what was originally written. And how do we know it was written?

48:14

Through the transmission of the text and all the manuscripts that we have present. The point is, is we know exactly that God's word has been preserved through time.

48:23

We have his inerrant word in Scripture. That doesn't mean we don't have errors in the transmission of the text in terms of if a scribe was copying a text and he accidentally skipped a line in his text.

48:37

How do you know he skipped a line in his text? We'll just put it this way. If you've got 10 manuscripts of the same manuscript and you've got all nine of the manuscripts saying exactly the same thing word for word and you've got one that comes later and he skips a line.

48:54

So they've all got exactly the same thing. But this scribe, it must have been a dark room.

49:00

Maybe he was hungry that day. You know, he wasn't like you. You need protein. If he doesn't get protein, he literally turns into a bear.

49:07

I'd be a bad scribe. Yeah, exactly. And so maybe he had your problem with food and he didn't have protein.

49:13

So his mind wasn't working and he skipped a line or two. Well, the point is, if you've got 10 manuscripts and you've got all of them agreeing precisely, except this later one is missing two lines.

49:25

What's that say? The scribe is having a bad day. And he just made a mistake.

49:30

He didn't have the fluorescent lighting. He's in a cave somewhere, whatever the case may be. So that's how we know.

49:37

And we move back and we get back to the original text. We get back back to the autographer through the manuscript tradition.

49:44

But Dr. Clark quotes the longer ending of Mark, which is one of the one of the only very small number of verses or sections that we have that we go.

49:55

This is a textual variance. And it's because it comes later in the textual tradition and we can see it as a textual variance.

50:02

But all of our modern editions show they put it in brackets. Right. Right. You've got one account of the adulterous woman.

50:10

You've got the long running of Mark. Big deal. And they come later. And all we say is that didn't change anything.

50:16

No doctrine. And we put it in brackets going this shows up later in the manuscript tradition or this is in conflict with this thing.

50:21

But it's there. But the point is, is we have the autographer in the manuscript tradition. In your

50:26

Bibles, you have the Theanostos, word of the living God. But Dr. Clark doesn't even understand textual transmission.

50:33

He doesn't understand the history of the Bible. He finds a verse seems to work for him. So he says, coolant. Right. You want to drink this?

50:40

And you ask the you ask the question also, and this is where I'll shut up. I'll shut up for now. This is huge.

50:48

Think about the complaint. See, we miss this. And this is what we can't take for granted. Christians miss this.

50:54

We do. We get jaded to truth. We miss things constantly. Sometimes we make assumptions at times.

51:01

We don't think critically. I mean, meet all of us. All of us are like this. But here you have an atheist who says that he's an

51:07

African ape in a universe with no goal oriented forces, no ultimate foundation for ethics or laws of logic.

51:16

Science works just because he believes he's the and he's the descendant of bacteria. And here you have him on stage railing.

51:24

Why? Because these these guys believe things that aren't true. They don't have enough decency to admit that their system is not true.

51:33

They want they contradict themselves at every turn. What do you have them assuming? Human value, dignity, ultimate ethics and arts, universal laws of logic, that science is possible because uniform nature is uniform.

51:45

What do you have him doing the entire time? Imaging God, you know, acting like he's living in God's universe.

51:52

But here's how I think we miss it as Christians is because all of us know that God is and especially as Christians, you're trusting in Jesus.

52:00

You trust in his revelation. You know how he wants you to think. You know, God doesn't want you to contradict yourself.

52:05

That's very important as a Christian. You know that God wants you to hold to the truth. Right. You know that God wants you to be consistent and to love your neighbor and to uphold human value and dignity.

52:14

And so when you see an atheist saying contradiction, non -scientific and all these different things, you're like,

52:19

I don't like any of that. Right. I don't want to live like that. And so you try to figure out ways to get around what he's saying.

52:26

But what are we missing? Fundamentally, he's not supposed to be doing that. Right. Right. So what's really going on?

52:33

Well, we were arguing Romans 1. Romans 1 is going on. He knows his creator, but he's exchanging the truth of God for a lie.

52:42

And he's worshiping and serving the creature rather than the creator. And he is an enemy of God, holding down the truth, engaging in a life of self -deception.

52:52

That's what we were saying. Yeah. And I was even just thinking, I didn't think about it until just now, even him trying to get someone to drink the antifreeze was assuming that antifreeze was going to kill you like it did the day before.

53:10

Right. He even read the back. Yeah. Harmful or fatal if swallowed. So even even in that assumption, he's he's given it up.

53:18

Because it's a uniform universe. Yeah. I just thought because poison will hurt you. How do we know? Because it'll do this to your body.

53:23

Yeah. How do we know? Well, based on past experience, we project into the future. It's just this circle that you can't get out of.

53:30

You know, what's really amazing is Isaac and I were driving home. We had a blast. We were driving home and we were talking about this point that gets missed.

53:41

Sometimes you have to defend these things in parts and pieces. You have to say, well, laws of logic, let's figure out how to justify that and how the triune

53:48

God only provides a precondition for it. Uniformity in nature. And you start going through these different things.

53:54

But here's what's amazing is that they can't ultimately be isolated. They're actually always working together.

54:02

Yeah. Because what? And I'm probably maybe we should end with this. You think? Yeah. OK. So think about this for a second.

54:10

If if you and I are in a debate about evidences and truth. Right. What do we what do we have to assume as we're like examining an argument?

54:18

We're assuming a couple of things. Is this consistent? Does this violate formal canons of logic?

54:25

And so what are we doing? You're going, OK, laws of logic that has to be consistent. It's got to be truthful. Right. But what else are we assuming the whole time that the universe is uniform and that we're using our past experience to project into the future?

54:38

But then there's one more big thing that is being assumed the entire time that almost no one talks about is that we're assuming that human beings matter.

54:47

And also there's an ethical question. Am I allowed to lie to you?

54:52

Hmm. Like if I start arguing for something for you, I want you to believe me and I'm arguing, you're making you're assuming the entire time that there's this ultimate ought hanging over both of our heads that I am not allowed to lie to you.

55:07

Yep. Yep. Like what if like I said, hey, I got this amazing evidence for this thing and you're like, great, show it to me.

55:13

And it's just lying through my teeth. It's like 10 things that I said that I saw or tested or found in some way.

55:21

And I am lying all the way through it. Right. If you found out, you'd be like, hey, stupid.

55:27

Right. You're not supposed to be doing that. So what's amazing is that there's no real way to argue and to debate and to seek truth without assuming all of these things that are only coherent.

55:42

Right. And they only comport with the Christian view of the world. There's no way out.

55:47

Right. There isn't a way out. Right. Look, you have to have the triune

55:53

God of Scripture to make sense out of all human experience. What we were arguing in that debate was that all human experience, even this debate tonight, is unintelligible without the triune

56:06

God of Scripture. And if somebody goes, that sounds stupid, we'd say, thanks for proving it.

56:12

Right. Yeah. Because what is what what do you have to assume for stupid to be an insult?

56:17

Laws of logic. Only what works within our world. Yeah. So every time the atheist starts railing against Christianity, he has to first assume

56:26

Christianity in order to rail against it. This is why I love precept, because I'm sitting here thinking there are a lot of times in that debate where I think an evidentialist would have made me panicked.

56:39

Yeah. You know, and so like even like with the coolant or the, you know, where there's he's constantly show me like they wanted like examples like evidentialist is going to try to like come up with as many examples as they possibly can to like try to prove to them.

56:53

And like precept, you just sit there and just say, why are you even asking that question? Right. You shouldn't. You have no business even asking that question.

57:00

You're not supposed to have that. And I love I love the part where I know we're wrapping up here, but the part where where Dan Ellis goes, if I knew

57:07

I was going to be debating some presuppositionalists, I would have I would have declined. I thought exactly. Had I known that it was going to be a debate with presuppositionalists

57:16

I probably would have turned it down. Because he yeah. Yeah. Because he I think in his mind, he's coming in and thinking,

57:22

I'm going to thrash these guys. I'm going to they're not going to have any proof or any evidence. And he's going, oh, shoot.

57:28

Well, that's the thing is that I think atheists are fearful of transcendental apologetics or presuppositional apologetics because they recognize that the presuppositional apologist is going to have a philosophically consistent position and not enter into the discussion pretending neutrality.

57:45

Right. Which is what the atheist wants. Yep. He wants the opponent to pretend neutrality like him so that he can get his argument running.

57:55

He wants logic. He wants uniformity. He wants all he wants, ultimate ethics and values. And he doesn't want to have to account for them.

58:01

So he gets upset when he argues with a Christian that says, no, you have to give an accounting for them. I can do it in my worldview.

58:07

You can't in yours. So there was one last thing. And I hope that this will bless the church.

58:13

As much as these as much as these atheists really provided no coherent response to anything, as much as Dr.

58:21

Clark was just nutty throughout the whole thing. And I can say that because I'm a Christian. As much as that's true.

58:28

One of the things we wanted to show was that to the church was that you stand on the Christian position.

58:33

And not only does it destroy the atheistic perspective, but it also provides for you a foundation to actually then get to the point where you don't merely leave the atheists there with their pants around their ankles.

58:45

Exactly. You know, sort of shamed. Yeah. You actually leave them in a place where you can now call them to faith in Christ and to show them that the problem that's happening here is simple, sinful suppression of the truth.

59:00

Right. And that's why Jesus came. So in our closing statement, which is only five minutes long for two people, that's just nuts.

59:10

Dr. White went for about two and a half minutes, and then I got two and a half minutes. It wasn't as nuts as Dr. Clark's closing statement.

59:16

No, not with the Preston. So but I had about two and a half minutes, and it was amazing because in God's providence,

59:22

Dan had made a comment in his opening statement. No, his rebuttal that provided the perfect ramp to then sort of pull together everything that happened in the debate and say, and here's why we're really here.

59:36

Yeah. So we were able to preach the gospel. And I want to say to my brothers and sisters in Christ who who hold to a different methodology of Christian apologetics, more classical evidentialist approach, something like that.

59:50

I want to just challenge those brothers and sisters to think about that. What did we get to do?

59:55

Because we stood on scripture as the foundation. We got to actually expose their sin and their foolishness.

01:00:03

Right. And then call them to repentance and faith. Exactly. We got to preach the gospel by God's grace to a lot of people in this public debate.

01:00:13

I want to just address this one point. It was a really powerful part of the dialogue.

01:00:19

I think Dan, it was Dan, you said it. You asked the question, why would God create this world if he's perfect?

01:00:25

If he existed for all eternity, he's perfect and perfect himself. Why would he create all this? Why does he need us?

01:00:31

And the answer is he doesn't. And that was what you were arguing against this evening, gentlemen, was the triune

01:00:38

God of scripture, the God who has existed from all eternity as Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

01:00:45

The beginning of the Gospel of John says, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, toward the father in face to face, intimate relationship with the father.

01:00:58

And the word was God as to his nature, God. God has existed from all eternity and perfect fellowship, intimacy, harmony in himself.

01:01:09

And yet God created us. Why would a perfect God create us? And the answer from scripture is to glorify himself.

01:01:18

The answer from scripture is, what's our purpose? What does the Bible teach about our purpose? Our purpose is to glorify

01:01:24

God and to enjoy him forever. He's existed from all eternity as the triune

01:01:30

God, an intimate fellowship in the triune God. And yet he creates image bearers of God to know him and to experience him, to love him, to delight in him and to experience him.

01:01:40

The glory of God in the Gospel is that he displays in his creation of people like us, creatures that rebel against him and throw their fists up at him.

01:01:50

He creates us to display the glories of his grace and his justice.

01:01:57

And the glory of the Gospel is that God and the person of Christ condescended entered into this rebellious creation to chase down hostile rebel sinners like me.

01:02:09

And if you know him like you too, and if you're not in him like you too. This God chases rebel sinners, lives the life they have failed to live.

01:02:22

Dies a death that they deserve to die and rose again from the dead.

01:02:27

And the answer of the Gospel is the call of the Gospel. The good news is to turn away from sin to this

01:02:36

God and to trust in Jesus for salvation and for forgiveness, to experience life in him, eternal life.

01:02:46

But I'm going to say one more thing. In coming to Christ, you don't experience merely, merely the gift of eternal life, but you actually will have a justification and foundation for all that's happened tonight.

01:02:59

All that's been assumed, uniformity, laws of logic and ultimate ethics, which they appealed to, but never even attempted to really justify.

01:03:10

Repent and believe the Gospel. Now, I think that that that needs to be noted.

01:03:16

People, people need to to really consider that. Is when you think about apologetic methodology, do you want an apologetic methodology that is consistent?

01:03:25

That is not neutral? That exposes the unbelievers folly and leads to an opportunity to call people to repentance and faith?

01:03:34

Like what I don't want to do, and here's what I mean, Pastor Luke, I don't want to be in a place where I'm reasoning as an apologist from a position of neutrality for some general form of theism.

01:03:45

Like, you know, William Lane Craig, who's a Christian who's who believes in the Trinity, believes in salvation through faith in Christ alone.

01:03:52

So praise God for that. He's actually said in public before that he's not certain God exists and that he's not arguing for the

01:03:59

Christian God. He's arguing for a general form of theism that can be accepted by Judaism, Islam or Christianity.

01:04:07

Now, I want to say that if I'm arguing from his perspective of apologetic methodology, don't

01:04:14

I have to leap from a position of neutrality and general theism to then now leap over into a whole other discussion about Jesus?

01:04:24

Yes. And repentance and faith. Like, don't I have to switch positions? Like I'm what

01:04:30

I'm becoming there, I think, is this. And I don't mean this to be offensive. I mean, philosophically, aren't

01:04:36

I an enemy behind the lines if I'm pretending to be neutral and then coming out later on the side of Jesus, calling people to repentance?

01:04:46

We want to say that presuppositional apologetic methodology allows you to be consistent, to destroy the folly of atheism and consistently call people to repentance and faith without switching positions.

01:04:59

Exactly. So that's what's important. I one one last thing I was thinking, I love this part, too, is

01:05:05

Dan Ellis kept saying, you you're not you're not proving anything.

01:05:10

You just keep asserting. And I was like, yes, because, yes, you're asserting

01:05:18

Christ's lordship over all things. Yes. You know Christ. You know him in your heart. You're denying him in your unrighteousness.

01:05:25

And yes, we're asserting that. And and our friend Joe Boot always says, you know, we're not just we shouldn't be asking for a seat at the table because Christ owns the whole table.

01:05:38

You're asserting this table belongs to Christ. Yeah. I'm going to show you your folly and then I'm going to call you to repentance.

01:05:44

Exactly. And so I love he kept saying that. And it was just like, yeah, and it was interesting. That's a good point.

01:05:49

Yes, I am asserting it. But here's the point. All ultimate claims, of course, are just that ultimate.

01:05:57

Exactly. Here's the thing. If we had to appeal to something outside the triune God for a foundation for our arguments, then that other thing would be ultimate.

01:06:06

Exactly. Not God. So it wouldn't even make sense if we're saying the triune God is ultimate for us to appeal to something outside of him, because then that next thing is

01:06:14

God. You see the point? And that's people have to hear. But we weren't merely making the assertion. Of course, we were asserting it's his lordship and all the rest.

01:06:23

We were providing evidence within that argument. He just didn't like the evidence. He didn't like the evidence. We weren't just saying just because who was the one in the debate, the debate that said just because that was his position.

01:06:34

It was just how can you justify your appeal to science? Well, science works. Yeah. So just because like just because that's not the nature of our argument.

01:06:42

When we assert the crown rights of Jesus and his authority and self -attesting word, we're also going to say we'll provide you philosophical evidence.

01:06:51

You see, we'll show you that my worldview can encompass everything that's meaningful within your worldview and can justify every appeal to all these things.

01:06:59

Your worldview can't have any of them. And and that's because you put God as the center, the

01:07:04

God who says that, you know, he exists, but you're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. All right. Good show.

01:07:10

Yeah. All right. We got a lot done. All right, guys. So the reason we do this show every week is, of course, to talk about important cultural subjects and issues and talk about things that can hopefully bless you and your family and your church.

01:07:21

But ultimately, this particular show is to get people pointed over to EndAbortionNow .com.

01:07:27

EndAbortionNow .com is our local church focused mission to bring the gospel in the area of abortion.

01:07:35

We have 400 some odd churches across the country and around the world right now who are bringing the gospel into conflict with the issue of abortion.

01:07:43

Literally, thousands of children have been saved from death as a result of this mission. And we're also now bringing the gospel to our local legislatures demanding justice for the pre -born.

01:07:53

You guys can get started. You can get free training and free resources. We want nothing from you. Just go to the website

01:07:59

EndAbortionNow .com. You get all the free training and all the free resources. All you need to do is go there and sign up with your local church.

01:08:06

We'll get you connected. You can be a part of this movement, a not neutral, gospel centered movement to bring the gospel into conflict with the issue of abortion.

01:08:15

So that's it, guys, for next week with Jeff Durbin. That's Luke the Bear. I'm Jeff Durbin. We'll catch you guys right here next week.

01:08:21

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