Andrew on the Canadian Atheist Program

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Andrew Rapport. I'm at the Cruciform Conference, so at the time of this recording. But what

I want to give to you today is, I was on an atheist program called the Canadian Atheist. And this was an episode

I did with a Canadian Atheist. And what ended up transpiring, and there's going to be some things we're going to talk about, foul language, why did we talk about that?

Because of the fact that what ends up happening with this guy is, he's been on Apologex Live several times if you listen to it, and this guy is going to make a case when we talk about foul language, that they're just words.

Now on Apologex Live, he talks about the fact that words and everything were just chemical reactions.

Wait for that part of the exchange, because you're going to see a guy who says they're just words, and he's suddenly going to say that words have no meaning, no morality, and he's, unbeknownst to him, going to fall into a trap and argue that words have morality.

That's going to be a problem in his world view. So check out this episode where I was on the Canadian Atheist.

Today on The Rap Report. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host,

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. 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.

All right, here we go. Welcome to CA. Today is, what is today? Today is Wednesday, October the 20th, 2020.

I am Michael. Dean is not here. He's tied up in my basement. He was a bad boy. But luckily, as I posted about on Facebook earlier, we have a guest with us.

This has been a long time in the making. I first reached out to our guest tonight months and months ago, but he's incredibly busy, but we're really,

I'll keep saying we, Dean's not here. We're really happy that he was able to join us tonight.

We're going to have a discussion. He has been gracious enough to host me three times on his

YouTube show. And when last we spoke, November the 5th,

I'll be going back again to celebrate a Democratic presidential win. And well, at least that's my hope anyway.

But so joining us today is the host of Striving for Eternity Ministries and the co -host of the

Apologetics Live YouTube channel. We're going to talk a lot about that as we get through with it. But now,

Andrew Rapoport, welcome to the Canadian Atheist. You see here, first thing

I have to do is come in and correct an atheist right off the bat. Today is

Tuesday. Today's Tuesday? What did I say? You said it was

Wednesday. Wednesday. You know what it is? I was looking at my calendar before we got started, and I have a mountain of stuff

I'm doing yesterday, and so I had Wednesday in my brain. So yeah, it is Tuesday. Did I say episode 122? This is episode 122.

Well, thanks for having me. It has been a pleasure having you on. I think I know that it has been a long time in the making, as you said.

I forget when you first reached out to me, and I was like, I can't even think about it until after the summer.

It was probably June, because you had gone on to Schuyler Fiction's channel, and I saw that episode on Schuyler's channel, and I'm like, this seems like a really cool cat.

I want to chat with him. So just before we get too much into this, everyone listening to this will notice that the dulcet tones of my wife's intro have been edited because, of course,

Andrew is a Christian, and so I will be clean as well this episode out of respect.

Don't worry. I've got another episode all ready to go with Dean where I'll swear up a streak again, but I have not been replaced.

I'm not a doppelganger. It's really Michael. But yeah, out of respect for our guest,

I won't be swearing tonight. So okay, there's a lot to talk about.

Yeah, but anyway, so I first reached out to you in June after that, and it was like, get back to me after the summer.

So around mid -August, I sent you an email, and you're like, I'm still tied up.

I'm like, okay, and I tried not to take it personally, but then finally it was maybe, what, six weeks ago?

You had said, hey, we're going live tonight. Why don't you come on our show? And I did, and it's been a lot of fun.

And you never got on. Actually, the first time you came in and you had to leave, because we do

Apologetics Live every Thursday night, so it kind of makes it open to anybody.

Anyone can come in and ask any challenging questions or whatever they want to talk about. And we had

Anthony Svester, Dr. Svester, was speaking with someone else if I remember correctly. On Evolution, that's right.

Yes, and so because he had set that up, we were like, all right, we'll go for a while. You were sitting there the whole time, and I'm texting going, hey, there's a guy,

Michael, make sure he gets in. And by the time we were ready to bring you in, you had to go. So we said, okay, we'll bring you in first thing next week.

Yeah, that's right. My memory isn't what it used to be. And I think I hung around for about an hour and 15 minutes or so, and then

I'm watching the clock and looking at my phone, because that's how I have my alarm set, and I'm like, man,

I'm going to be a zombie if I don't go to bed. But it was great.

And then I was on for, what, three weeks straight. And it's been really good.

We've had a lot of interesting discussions. So everyone, just so you're aware,

Andrew, I posted links to all of my appearances on Unapologetics Live.

And I got back some interesting comments and emails from some of our listeners from as far away as Australia.

And it was interesting. One of the comments was, is this really Michael? He's not swearing. So that's why

I kind of joked about that when we started just a couple minutes ago. But it's been great.

So why don't we get into what we're going to talk about today. So one of the things that I like to do is, unlike a lot of atheists who have podcasts,

I have no problem at all giving a forum to you or to anybody else to reach our audience.

Everyone else is aware. They've heard me say this a million times, but I'll say it for you as well. We got super lucky really early on.

I met Armin Navabi, who's the founder of the Atheist Republic Facebook page.

I met him at a little conference called Imagine No Religion, which was usually held in BC. But three years ago it was held in Toronto.

And I met Armin there, and he was gracious enough to come on the podcast. And then he blasted it out to his worldwide audience.

And we benefited from that. So we now get regular downloads from over 100 countries.

And so when I say I got emails from people from Australia, that was, I think, technically the farthest away.

Because it's on the other side of the world. But we get a lot of comments from all over the place, and we're really fortunate in that way.

And I like giving our guests access to that audience to say, here, tell your story.

Tell your side of things. And we can chat about it.

So that was the first thing I want to talk about, is your story. Because you're not originally

Christian. That is true. So yeah, my background is

I was raised Jewish. I've kind of, in my family, we've gone through basically, if you understand anything of Judaism, we went through all this major denominations, if you want to call it that, for ease of understanding.

But from Orthodox to Conservative to Reformed, each one is more liberal than the next.

But I was raised Jewish in a Jewish home, bar mitzvahed, what, like eight to ten years of Hebrew school, where I'd go after school for several hours, three days a week, and then on Saturdays, especially as you get ready for bar mitzvah.

So I was actually raised, and this will shock some people, but anyone that's

Jewish will understand, a generation after the Holocaust, I was raised to believe that Jesus Christ is Hitler's God.

So I was never looking for Christ. And to explain why that is, is just like many non -Jewish people,

Gentiles, wouldn't understand Judaism. They think everyone wears a kippah. They don't understand the different divisions and fractions within Judaism.

Well, the same is true for Jewish people with Christians. All the Christians are just Catholic.

And the Catholic Church supported Hitler, and because of that, this was the perception that we would have, is that that's

Hitler's God, that's who he worshipped. And so I wasn't looking in any way to become a

Christian at all. It really, and I don't know if you and I talked about this at all on Apologetics Live, but really what it was, it was logic, mathematics, that got me to realize that the

New Testament had to have been supernaturally written. Because you looked at prophecies, the guy who was explaining this to me, basically

I wrote it off. I was like, all right, let's examine this.

Doing calculations in my head of trying to figure things that he was giving as prophecy, there's some things that are self -fulfilling.

Anyone knowing the prophecy can make that happen. But there's prophecies that I put in the category of coincidence, and those were the ones

I was interested in. And it basically got beyond what's called statistical impossibility, 10 to the 48th power, to have all those prophecies happen by coincidence.

So I didn't believe in Christ, I just believed the New Testament and the Old Testament had to be written by someone that was supernatural.

So then I started to ask, okay, what does the New Testament teach? Really the sticking point for me was the resurrection, because dead people don't rise.

So that was the issue that I had, because for me, anyone that knew me when

I was a child, there was no question whether I was a sinful child.

Tried to burn my house down twice, once we put it out with a fire extinguisher, the second time fire department. So I guess

I got better in my sin. But no, I was a wicked kid, and a terror for my parents, unfortunately.

But the thing that ended up happening was I never was looking or thinking that I was going to be accountable to anybody for that.

And so I wasn't looking for a savior of any kind. But then again, I didn't see myself as needing one.

I thought that basically my Judaism saved me, because that's what we were raised to believe.

But I could not explain away the resurrection. If you do any study on the views of the resurrection, there's a lot of different views.

Maybe they got the wrong tomb, maybe he didn't fully die, different things.

I have one that, as far as I know, is still original with me. My last argument was to say to this guy

Chuck, I said, maybe the disciples dug a hole underneath the tomb, pulled the body out. And he was like, in three days, they don't have heavy equipment.

And so I could not explain away the resurrection. So if Christ rose from the dead—

I was there to dig the core through stone. Yeah, he said there's not heavy equipment, they can't do it in three days.

So that was the final argument I had. And I said, if Christ rose from the dead, then that proves what he said about himself, that he was

God. And that he offers the forgiveness of sin. I know that the guilt that not only

I, but every human being has when we do something we know is wrong, my conscience understood that, but I didn't think

I was going to be accountable to anybody with it. At that moment is when I realized I would be accountable to God.

And he vindicated it, proved it, by raising himself from the dead. And so I became a

Christian at that time, turning from trusting basically my Judaism as earning me righteousness, and trusting what

Christ did on the cross. And how old were you at that point? I was 16 at that time. 16, okay, interesting.

So, okay, so you're a Christian. One of the things that I've learned is, saying you're a

Christian is like saying I drive a car. So can you lay out, because we've had lots of different Christians on our show, can you lay out your, and I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it's just the first thing that popped into my head, your flavor of Christianity?

Yeah, and it's a good question. Because as you came on our show and we talked about, you brought up Stephen Anderson.

And I think you were surprised that both Anthony and I were like, yeah, we don't put him in the category of Christian. Yeah, so the thing when he said, what is a

Christian? Ultimately, a Christian is going to be someone who puts their ultimate trust in God and his word.

We're going to be, so why am I saying it that way? When you have, as you've probably met plenty of professing atheists who say,

I used to be a Christian. And they weren't. They were never a Christian.

They were hypocrites that stopped pretending. They pretended to be a Christian. Why would I say that? Well, two reasons.

One, it's biblical. In 1 John 2 .19, it says they went out from among us because they were never of us.

They went out to expose that they were not of us. So the Bible would say that they were never a

Christian. But more so, what you have is you have people whose ultimate trust and authority was not

God and his word. It was their reasoning, their ability to reason, their thinking.

But ultimately, it becomes them. Now, the way really I would say what is a

Christian is going to be someone who doesn't trust in his good works, his genealogy, or him being a good person to earn righteousness with God.

But they trust in what Christ did alone on the cross. And there is a distinction being made here with that.

Because you can have Roman Catholics, they'll say they're Christian. You'll have Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons.

They all use the Christian name. In fact, anyone that just worships

Christ or accepts Christ as a prophet could be Christian. Islam is actually considered by some to be a

Christian cult. That just swerved off even more. Because early on, Muhammad was actually teaching what he thought was a continuation of Christianity.

So, what you end up with, all of those that I mentioned, is one key distinction.

And this key distinction is literally the difference between heaven and hell. And that is trusting in Christ alone.

The reason being is every human -made religion, every one of them is going to have human effort.

In other words, Roman Catholics, it's faith plus works. So the faith is not enough.

You have to add the works. If you're looking at Islam, it's going to be doing one good deed counts for ten bad.

And you're just at the mercy of Allah to accept it. If you do what we call rabbinical or Second Temple Judaism, the

Judaism that's known of today, not the biblical Judaism that was in the Old Testament, they would say that we do

Torah, we obey the law. Again, works. Hinduism, Buddhism, any of them.

What you end up seeing is they all have an element that is human effort.

Even if it's added to faith, but the ultimate way someone gets right with God is human effort.

That's a man -made religion. So I can objectively look at any religion. I did it when I wrote my book,

What Do They Believe? What Do They Believe? is basically a systematic theology of the major Western religions.

What I did was I studied from their sources and systematized their belief systems.

In Islam, I think it's one of the only ones, actually. Let me stop you for just one second.

You just said, and I don't want to forget about it, but if people are interested in your book, where can they find it? All my books can be found at strivingforeternity .org

on the store there. You can get What Do They Believe?

What Do We Believe? Dr. Silvestro's book, which you might be interested in, On the Origin of Kinds, because that's going to deal a lot with some of the things you discuss as far as creation, evangelism, presuppositional apologetics.

That's what that book will cover. Sorry, you were talking about Islam? Yeah, because what

I did with What Do They Believe? Here's a thing that frustrated me when I wrote this, or what

I was reading from others. I listened to a rabbi who was talking about Christianity, and he misrepresented what

Christianity actually is. But since most of his audience is always rabbis or Jewish people, they know nothing about it.

And so he seems like an expert. I actually have had a thing that when the rabbi who gave me all these cassette tapes of this gentleman,

I said, I'll debate him anytime, anywhere. And he actually heard that and challenged me to a debate.

He actually created a poster for it. And then when he found out, he listened to some of my debates, and he didn't want to debate me anymore.

But I didn't want to misrepresent someone's position. So that book is different than most books on world religions, because what it isn't doing is trying to refute the religions.

It's trying to explain what they actually believe. Sure, yeah. It's interesting that you say that, because I've, and we talked about this before, but I spent probably a total of four years studying with one of the groups you mentioned,

Jehovah's Witnesses. And they call themselves Christian, like without hesitation.

One of the couple, because I'm sure you're aware, but it's always a couple that shows up at your house, right?

And it's usually two men or two women at first, but then if you actually have a Bible study, it's typically either the man or the woman and their spouse that come with them, if they are married.

And I'll never forget this. I was in my early 20s the first time this happened.

And I said, well, would this whole Jehovah's Witness thing explain it to me? And they said that the

Watchtower, and what I came to know later is the Watchtower Bible and tract society, but Jehovah's Witnesses were descendants, these were their words, of first century

Christians. And in my head, I'm just like, well, everyone in my regular audience can assume what

I actually said, but what I said was, well, that's BS. And it didn't sit well kind of from that point on, like how on earth, how could you possibly recognize that historically?

But spent a lot of time, and Jehovah's Witnesses are one of the groups that a lot of times when

I talk to Christians, they really have no idea what Witnesses actually believe.

And one of the biggest telltale ones is they say, well, only 144 ,000 people are going to heaven. Like, you have no idea what you're talking about.

That's not what they believe at all. So I'm curious, do you know what they actually mean by the 144 ,000?

Well, actually, so there's 144 ,000 saints that would be in the new heaven, and the rest would be on the new earth.

That's right, yeah, the 144 ,000 is 12 ,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel.

So a witness shall be made to all the inhabited nations, and the end will come, the end comes, and these 144 ,000 go to heaven to become angels.

I met one of these people at one of their conventions in Hamilton at Copse Coliseum.

And this person was introduced to me as someone who knew that they were going to be an angel.

And I openly laughed, because I couldn't help myself.

I'm like, what do you mean? What do you mean you know you're going to be an angel? Like, what? So that was interesting.

See, now, if he ran into a Mormon, the Mormon would have said, well, you're just going to be an angel, I'm going to be a god. Oh, exactly, yeah.

That's another thing. Mormons is another group that I've seen. Mormonism, I always said, was good science fiction. I think

Joseph Smith was a science fiction writer before there was such a genre of science fiction. He might have

L. Ron Hubbard beat, actually. Well, L. Ron Hubbard, there's a little interesting thing with him. Do you know how

Scientology started? How he started that? I don't have any snippets of that. I don't have a lot of information.

So it started over a poker bet. Sweet. So he was playing poker with some friends.

They had a $1 million bet that he could create a religion.

And I think he had to get 100 ,000 followers. You know, within, I think it was one or two year period.

Now, when I was growing up, you had three channels. For some of your audience, they may not understand that.

Before cable, you had a choice of three channels. And every commercial was his book

Dianetics. Now, he probably spent like $3 or $4 million to win $1 million.

But he did win the $1 million. The thing that I ended up seeing when

I was working on the book, and I spent 14 years studying other religions and researching them, looking from their authorities so I don't misrepresent them, and then going to people who are authorities in those different religions and asking, am

I accurate to check the work? I had one guy, I still remember this.

I had this Mormon, I was at a Mormon festival. And this one

Mormon said to me that no Christian ever presents Mormonism without misrepresenting it.

I said, okay, well, I'll tell you what. I'll give you a copy of my book. You tell me if there's anything I have wrong.

You know, if you can't find anything major, you pay the $15 for the book. And if not, if you find something, you get it free.

He was like, okay. So I sent him the book. He found three grammatical errors.

So, okay, corrected those. Two, that he actually said, I wouldn't even mention these, but I'm struggling to find something.

And then the only thing he could find was the fact that I had said something about the birth order and their thinking between Jesus and Lucifer.

Some Latter -day Saints believe they were born at the same time. Some think that Jesus was born first. I said they were born at the same time.

So he questioned that, but he had to admit that it is a discussion within Mormonism. So I said, so essentially you're saying

I got everything correct. Yeah. Yeah, I never saw the $15 either. But you look at all those, and they all have human effort.

They all have an element of people getting right with God by human effort, by some level of it. And that's what you see with a man -made religion.

You don't see that with Christianity. The distinction there is that it's trusting what

Christ did, not what we do. Okay, so then do you have a way to label what it is?

Because we talked about a bunch of stuff, and I'm still not understanding what you mean when you say you call yourself a

Christian. So like to label that, like your version of that. So I generally use a different term.

Like being saved by grace alone,

Bible alone, that kind of stuff? Well, not Bible alone, but the Reformation would word it as being saved by faith alone, in grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

And so that would be, the issue I would say is I would word it as I was converted.

Because that's an easier term to understand. And this is a misnomer that some people have, is just because if you're born into a

Christian family, like your parents are Christian, that doesn't mean you are. That's different than others.

Thank you for saying that. Because it's actually something that Richard Dawkins talked about in The God Delusion, saying that he didn't want people saying, you know, this is a

Christian child or a Muslim child. This is a child of Christian parents, you know, a child of Muslim parents.

So I appreciate you saying that, although I'm sure you're going to add a caveat. Well, no, I'm not. I mean, the thing that you see with a lot of religions, like if you look at Catholicism, if your parents are

Roman Catholic and you're born in that family, you're automatically Roman Catholic. So there are religions like that.

Now, Islam is pretty much, there's a little distinction in Islam because you're supposed to, to be a

Muslim, you're supposed to, you know, recite the prayer in front of witnesses in Arabic.

But there's plenty of Muslims who grow up never doing that or maybe doing it as a child when they don't know what they're really doing.

But the thing is, is you have to convert to Christianity. And that conversion is a change of thinking between what you trust as far as what gives righteousness.

Instead of trusting self, you're trusting what Christ did. Jehovah's Witnesses don't baptize their children.

It has to be their choice, like in adolescence, early adulthood. Would you say that's something they got right?

I, you know, I would struggle even with baptizing a child if they want to.

Because, you know, there's too many people who, they grew up with parents that are

Christian, their friends get baptized or their parents want them to get baptized, and they do it not really understanding what they're doing, not really believing.

It's overwhelming, for sure. And so I do everything to really dissuade, actually, because I want them to really be convinced.

I don't want them just saying it because they think, I don't want people being hypocrites, basically.

So I don't want people saying they're Christian when they're not. Baptism is supposed to be an outward sign of an inward change.

So if someone's not genuinely a Christian, they didn't convert to Christianity, the baptism's meaningless.

And yet what a lot of people do, because they think of Roman Catholicism and others, where the baptism is what is the entrance into the religion.

So people think that, well, I got baptized, I'm a Christian. Or I go to a church, and I'm a member of a church,

I'm a Christian. Going to church makes you a Christian as much as going to McDonald's makes you a hamburger.

Sure, yeah. So here's an interesting point. And, you know, people think different things about the person

I'm about to mention, but his book has an interesting segment on his quote -unquote conversion, baptism.

But I'm sure you've heard of David Smalley. And his book, Baptized Atheist, actually has a really, one of the chapters in that talks about him being baptized as a child.

And it was almost exactly what you just described and why you try to discourage that.

And that was the first thing I thought of when you said that. I'm like, oh, that reminds me of this piece of Smalley's book.

It's an interesting read if you ever get the chance. Yeah, well, I could play you a short clip of about ten seconds long of me and David Smalley.

I've heard it on your show. But he was debating Matt Slick on moralism.

And basically saying the fact that there's talk of slavery, that the

Bible's immoral. So slavery is an issue of ownership, right? So I asked him this question.

Mr. Smalley, do you believe that abortion is moral? Oh, boy. Yeah. I'm glad I'm debating him instead of you.

Yeah, so he didn't want to debate. Abortion is a hot -button topic, especially now with some of the things that are going on in the

U .S. Well, there's a reason that question comes up, right?

Because think about it. What is abortion? It is an ownership issue. I mean, there's functionally no difference between saying this is my property and this is my body, right?

So if you're saying that slavery is immoral because you have ownership rights to another human being, well, that's exactly what we're saying with abortion.

I have ownership rights. We're saying they're not fully human, which is exactly the argument that was made with blacks and why they could be slaves, is they weren't human.

So abortion is they're not human. This is my body. I can do what

I want with it. And so you end up having the legalization of the killing of another person.

So if slavery is immoral, well, abortion should be far more immoral because abortion is not just an ownership.

But slavery didn't always end in murder or in the loss of life.

Actually, if you ever read the book Twelve Years a Slave, it was Solomon.

I forget his last name. He got kidnapped. He actually said that if the only slavery he knew was his first master, he wouldn't have had a problem with slavery.

I haven't been able to personally reconcile, but I also have no experience to compare it to. I don't want to jump too much down the rabbit hole of abortion because I was really wanting to talk about that on the 5th when

I come back on your show. But what I will say is there is no reasonable argument against the fact that an abortion is the termination of a life.

I don't care how liberal you are. I don't care how Republican you are. I don't care left, right wing.

That's not an argument that can reasonably be made. An abortion is the termination of a life without question.

And I think anyone that tries to argue otherwise, I don't think is being honest.

Well, I'm going to agree with you. I'm going to be speaking at a conference in Indianapolis this week on Thursday on this topic of abortion.

And it really is. It's an issue where I agree with you when you look at it scientifically.

You have two different DNAs. Mother and their child are two different blood types, two different genders.

It's a different human being. It is the termination of that life.

Here's where I think abortion is so fundamental for some people.

There's something that changed when we legalized abortion and started promoting it. We've changed the cultures that support abortion.

You've seen a change from a dignity culture to a victim culture.

So, in other words, we no longer see dignity in other human beings. We see people as victims.

So, instead of seeing a child and that that child in the womb has dignity, they're made in the image of God, they have a right to life.

Instead, it's, well, the mother doesn't want to have to bear this child or doesn't want to change her lifestyle to have to deal with the child.

She's not ready. She doesn't want the child. Maybe the child was the product of someone doing something to the woman she didn't want, whether it be rape or incest.

Again, these things show the woman as the victim. And that has really become the nomenclature of our culture.

Even in your culture in Canada, you have a lot of the victim mentality that's really rampant.

And people don't see dignity in other people as we used to.

I'm not sure I could disagree with you more. But, again, I don't want to jump too much into the abortion thing, but it is something that I'd like to bring up on the fifth.

What I will say is, I mean, I fundamentally disagree with all of it. But the last question I want to ask you on that is, so if a woman, and I accept that rape being the reason for an abortion,

I don't know the exact percentage, but I understand it's very low. I think it's under 5%.

And incest might be the same. I don't know. I don't have any statistics on that. But you wouldn't disagree that in a situation where a woman was raped or there was an issue of incest, you wouldn't disagree that that woman was victimized, would you?

Well, she was victimized. If she was raped, yes, she was victimized in the incident of the rape.

But whether she should carry the child to term and either give it up for adoption or raise the child, it's not the child's fault for what the father did.

So why do you punish the child? I agree that it is not. Yeah, I mean, the person who committed the assault, that is the person who is at fault.

But I want to stop that there. But I want so badly to dive into that another time.

And for everybody who's listening, when we do have that conversation, there'll absolutely be a link posted. And actually, what you can do is you don't even have to wait.

You can go to Apologetics Live and you can watch the conversation as it happens.

Yeah, it's ApologeticsLive .com. And anyone that wants to come in any Thursday night, 8 to 10

Eastern Time, if you go to ApologeticsLive .com, we put the links, unless we're doing a formal debate.

If we have a formal debate, we won't have a link to join. And we'll note that. But any

Thursday night, we'll have guests like you come in. But if someone comes in and asks a question, even if we have you on and we're talking with you, but someone comes in and asks, we just engage with that person as well.

So anyone can come in any time. That's what the show is there for. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about that because it's interesting.

And one of the things that I find interesting about it is that I don't want to say it's unique.

But there are, and I think there's a lot of factors that go into it. I mean, I'm sure that if I was to, you know, go in there on some random

Thursday and we didn't have the, sorry, something happened there.

Just give me half a second. Half a second's up. Yeah. Okay.

Well, a little bit of technical difficulties there, but here we go again. So yeah, something happened and the recording stopped there for a second, but we're up and running again.

So one of the things that, so the last thing you had said was that was what the show was about, is to have these engaging conversations.

And so what I was going to, what I had started to say was, if, I'm sure there are a lot of factors. If we didn't have the type of relationship that, you know, that we've built over the last little while, you know, in having these discussions.

And I came in just as some kind of, you know, random atheist and started swearing or this or that or insulting this and that.

I'm sure you just hit the, you know, control, alt, delete or whatever it is you do and the streamer thing, and I'd be out of there. But one of the things that's interesting, and I actually applaud you for it, and everyone who knows me knows

I don't blow smoke. I mean this genuinely, is your willingness to engage.

Because there are too many Christian shows that I've watched and I've tried to engage with, but the gatekeepers don't always want you to have that conversation.

And so to anyone who's, to everybody who's listening to this, if you want to engage either

Andrew or Anthony or Justin, who, again, I'll go back and say, after the first time

I was on, we spoke for 45 minutes after you had already left and had an amazing conversation.

It was so nice. And I'm really hopeful that Justin can come on, the Canadian atheist as well, to continue that.

But, you know, go in there. And like Andrew said, if there's a formal debate going on, well, you know, you're going to be out of luck that week.

But generally speaking, you go down to where the podcast is and there's a rubber ducky there for the StreamYards link and you click on that.

And, you know, you'll go into the, what is it called? The backstage or something? I think they call it backstage and then, yeah, bring it in.

And I'll just, you know, so folks, I'll kind of correct. I don't really boot people very easily.

The only people I'll boot is if I see someone that's trolling. They're really not interested in the discussion.

They're just trying to do gotchas. Or you're saying something like we have a Roman Catholic guy that would come in and he'd come in with everybody.

And he'd ask the same question and he'd be like, there's no Christian that can answer this. And then every single guest would answer it.

And the next week he'll be like, there's no Christian. And so eventually we're like, look, you're not listening. We've had seven people give you the answer.

And they've all given you the same answer. Seven different people. You know, and so it's hard to get booted because I do want to have dialogue.

I do want to have discussion. It's hard to get booted. Challenge accepted. Yeah. No, but,

I mean, the thing is it's a thing where I think on both sides you have people who are afraid to actually engage in discussion.

I think that it's really guys who they don't want to be confused with facts, just want to believe what

I want to believe. And you see that on both sides. I'll give you one. I know someone you think very highly of and I don't is

Aaron Ra. I think he's in that category. He doesn't really engage with people.

He does a lot of ad hominems. He does a lot of just going after things and having his lines that he uses.

But he doesn't actually engage with the people he's discussing, at least that I have seen.

And, you know, I see him. I would think that, I mean, the one thing that, and this is something that you're familiar, of course, with Steve McRae.

Yeah. Yeah. So Steve's been on the podcast a few times.

I've been on his program and stuff like that. And we, we have, we have an agreement when it comes to, you know, the definition, you know, the definition of atheism, you know, one just being the lack of a belief versus, you know, the assertion that God is in fact doesn't exist.

He put out a little paper on it. When I first looked at him like this is garbage. I threw it over my shoulder. And then when

I actually read it, I accepted the fact that even as an atheist that I have to, I have to assume a burden of proof.

And this is something that, that, that aren't doesn't accept. He looks at the more traditional, like, you know, lack of a belief.

So I don't believe you have to convince me. And so, you know, we just don't see eye to eye on that.

We've talked about it. We disagree and we've moved on. I don't agree with what you said about not engaging, especially when it comes to something like like phylogeny, which he is an expert in.

He has, he has, he has, and people will think of this what they will if you have listeners who, you know, listeners of your program that will listen to this and they'll, they'll think that I'm just, you know, kind of, you know, towing the company line, so to speak.

I'm having to think of interesting words to not swear because I, I do it so often, but, you know, kind of towing the company line.

But, I mean, he, he does not back down when it comes to things that, you know, that he knows and he can,

I've watched him with other people demonstrate, you know, evolution and, and the fact of it to people.

So I think I won't disagree with you when it comes to some things like philosophy and even, even

Aaron will admit that he's no expert when it comes to philosophy. But when it comes to, you know, things like, you know, biology and taxonomy and classification and stuff like that, we'd have to agree to disagree on that.

Yeah. I mean, what I see him do with a lot of guys is, you know, he starts getting angry, excited, and just, it's, it's a great debate tactic in the sense that it gets an audience on your side or the audience that agrees with you on your side.

And, and it's no different than you get guys that just spit out, you know, completely random facts that make them sound really smart.

And, and the, the impression is, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about. I would rather someone who can talk down to a level that everyone can understand them and, and discuss it.

So let me ask you a question because you mentioned it a couple of times. So, so obviously you can control your speech, right?

You, you, you don't, you, you, you've said it over and over. So my curiosity, why is it that you use foul language?

It's obviously not something that you do without thinking. There's some people that don't even think about it, just their language.

They, they do that. But you obviously can control it. So what is, what is your purpose in, in using foul language?

Because they're just words. And they helped me to emote, I think.

And I think sometimes they, they allow me to get a point across the way the way I want to.

And, and you know what, it's strong and it can be offensive to some people.

And to that, I say, okay. But because they are just words, we should have the capacity to look past those, just those words and look at the substance.

I meter myself, I meter myself when I have to, and I wouldn't get the wrong impression.

It's not how I am in my everyday life in every aspect of my life. I don't do it in any way, you know, professionally when

I'm working, obviously. And when I'm with, you know, certain people who are in my life,

I don't do it, obviously. I do it a lot on, on the podcast.

And that's why, like, even, even my wife's intro for this episode and everyone where Christian's on is, is bleeped out.

Cause I wrote her intro and she's like, you want me to read this? I'm like, yeah, I want you to read that word for word. She's like, okay.

And so it's, it's bleeped out because, and I think it's partially because I'm so passionate about it.

And again, because they're just words, I don't see, I don't see that the negative aspect that I think some people see and, and it, and there are some people for which

I will no longer do it. For example, I was on modern day debate with a guy named rib and the acronym for rib, well, he's actually changing out a cider in port, but it's a really, super nice guy based out of Ireland.

And I went on a series of three debates on modern James's channel, modern day debate with John Maddox and a guy named

Smokey saint. And by the third debate

I was, I was anti -Semitic and racist and everybody can go and hear what

I said to Smokey sent saint when he called me anti -Semitic and racist. So when, when

I get passionate about it, yeah. They, they start to fly. You said something interesting a minute ago about how some people will just spew out facts and appear to be smarter, smarter than they are.

John Maddox is one of those guys. His favorite line is 500 ,000 base pairs of something, you know, amino acids to make a protein.

And I'm sure he's got that tattooed on his body somewhere because when you start to drill down and talk to him about other stuff, he, you find out what he doesn't know.

And I've, I've sent him messages to see if he would have a debate with R and rock cause that would be,

I'm actually salivating right now. Thinking about watching R and tear him apart.

But anyway, I kind of got off, got off track there. So did that answer your question?

Yeah, no, it's because I, I've always, I've, I find that a lot of times people use foul language because they, they lack the vocabulary to be able to express things in, in other words, in ways of communicating to get the point across stronger.

But most of the people I know that do that, they do it because it's just, they, they've grew up hearing, they don't, there's now in your case, it's, it seems incorrect me if I'm wrong.

It seems that it almost seems as if you're trying to make a case against the morality.

It's just saying, Hey, they're just words. There's no, there's no morality to them. There's no right and wrong to them.

There's just words. That's how I'm hearing. Is that correct? Yeah. I think that that's pretty accurate.

I think there are some, I think there are some words that do personally, like there are some words that would push those boundaries.

But, but, but again, it's a, it's a, it's a personal choice for me. And I do have the,

I think as I've demonstrated with you, I do have the capacity to get a point across without it. Sometimes I don't want to.

Okay. So then I'm curious. So they're just words. I'll put you on the hot seat on your own show.

That's bad. So if you saw someone who is black, would you use the

N word? Of course not. Because that's completely different. There's a difference between using the foul term for feces versus using an overtly derogatory word against another member of the human race that was used by people who are too stupid to even understand what that word actually means.

And, and they do it to trigger and they do it to demean, they do it to dehumanize. Okay. So, but your argument is they're just words and yet you, you've changed.

And you know, one of the issues I, an issue that I usually have with, with that word is that a lot of blacks will use it toward other blacks.

And like I just go, I don't, I don't see that as appropriate either. Yeah, no,

I wouldn't. I don't either because what I think that actually does is it, it dilutes the argument that it's offensive because obviously for some of them that use this word, it's not offensive.

It's only if certain people use it that it becomes offensive. It's hard. And I think we're, we're drifting into the two white guys talking about something we don't, we don't have any experience in.

But it, but it's, I don't know about that so much, but yeah. Okay.

Then I'll introduce myself. But it's, I don't know that I can reasonably and intelligently talk about it because of the privilege that I have.

I would say, I don't think it's it's good for other black people to do it either.

But I, to that, I would just say, not my circus, you know, not my circus, not my, not my animals.

Yeah, no, I just wanted, I was trying to gauge with the fact that you were saying that they're just words and yet clearly some words you recognize there is something more than just words with them.

Yeah. But, but, but I think, and again, to go back to what I said, like you, you recognize the difference between, you know, the other word for feces and that word, right?

I mean, like there's, I would think, I think they're both wrong for the, for the same reason, right?

They're derogatory. They're, you know, they're, what is just a different descriptor, right?

I mean, it means the same thing. Well, no, I mean, and we're probably way off topic from what you wanted, but yeah,

I mean, there's, there's terms like you think of a term like faggot, right? Many years ago, it meant, it meant a bundle of sticks.

It's not a big deal. Once it started getting applied to people that practice homosexuality, now it changed.

Now it's an offensive term. And there's a difference. I think it's, I think in the United Kingdom, it means cigarette.

Yes. Yeah. And so, so the context of the culture matters in words and whether, you know, they, that, and so that's why

I'm saying they're more than just words. And I believe we inherently know certain words. We, we, there is a morality to them to say, okay, this is just wrong to use.

Now it can, it can be in certain circumstances, like we said with faggot being a cigarette in the

UK, or if it was used in a years ago, I mean you know, words had changed.

I mean, FDR was referred to as a very gay man. If you know anything about FDR, the president of United States many years ago, he was not a homosexual.

He was, he got in trouble with his wife for fooling around with other women. But the reality is gay just meant happy at that time.

Now it has, it's changed. And so. Yeah. And I think, and I think, I think for the, for the most part,

I agree with you that there are some words that there are some words, you know, but you look at the context and you look at this, the situation and stuff like that.

But I mean, in a lot of time, most of the time when I'm using words, you know, it's, it's as a descriptor or it's, you know, as an adjective or an adverb, you know, or something like that.

And it's, you know, and, and I, and I see the difference in that. And I've had this discussion,

I've had this discussion with my wife because my wife sometimes will, you know, has said to me, it's like, wow, you know, sometimes you really swear a lot.

And I'm like, yeah, that's me. You know, she also doesn't like the fact that I get loud sometimes because in her family, there's not a lot of, you know, they don't yell and scream in their family and in mine, you know, we do.

So there's a, there's a difference there. So I think that there are differences and I think that there are levels of, of sensitivity.

And when you talk about context, when you look at the context, like a, like, you know, the, the term you use, which I will not use, but I'll respect your right to, to use it for, you know, the, the you know, the term being used to reference another person's sexual identity or sexual preference.

We, we understand the context in which they're being used in the same way that a white person saying it to a black person is using is using that other word in, in that same derogatory way.

And I think that, I think you're right in that from that perspective, it does have a moral impact, but I don't believe that's the case when

I use them, when I'm using them as descriptors, adverse adjectives and things like that. So, oh yeah, that was a little bit off topic, but you know what, that's okay.

One of the things I wanted to chat about is your whole thing. I've spent an, a not insignificant amount of time on Apologetics Live looking at the different things.

And so I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that. So was this, was Apologetics Live your brainchild? Like who started it?

Yeah. How did it start? That's a good question. So we had, it's really started, Matt Slick came into a

Google Hangout when we were on a different, with a different platform that Matt just started coming in every

Sunday night and there would be a bunch of atheists that would debate him. Matt, as I'm sure it won't surprise you,

Matt has a particular personality that makes it hard for him to get along with certain other personalities.

He's a little quirky in some ways. And he and I are good friends. So it just became a natural fit for the two of us just worked well to kind of play off each other.

But, you know, we ended up ending that show and we started this one up again primarily because the goal was really to teach people how to do apologetics.

And that's why even when you're on, you know, in the middle of a discussion, I'll stop and I'll just speak to the audience and say, okay, notice what's happening here.

This is why someone's asking this question or because a lot of people will watch, but they don't know why someone will ask a question they ask, especially with Matt.

Cause Matt, Matt does these set up questions. And you know, if, if they, people don't answer it, then the audience goes, well, why does he asking that?

Why, why is that important? Well, it may be important, but if you don't know why then it's kind of ruined.

So we're, we try to do it as to fulfill many purposes and Matt's not on as much anymore.

He, he just, when he was planning to move, he got busy. I've ended up moving and I got busy and that's when

Justin and Anthony came in. And so now really the three of us kind of do it and we alternate, you know, which, which works well with the schedule as I'm traveling.

I can't always be there on Thursday nights and instead of canceling the show, you know, there's

Justin or Anthony can do it, you know, like this week both Anthony and I would be out, but you know,

Justin is a, is a, is around. So it makes it good in that sense. But the real thing with it is we're trying to answer challenging questions.

We're trying to, I don't want to say foster debate because the issue with it is, again, the word debate has a negative connotation.

So I'm using it in it's more of it's philosophical meaning, which is not a bad thing where people think debate's bad.

The debate in the sense where you make an argument, someone makes a counter argument, you, you work through cross -examining the arguments.

That's what we're looking to do and to educate people on how to do apologetics, how to make better arguments.

Growing up Jewish, it's a thing where you're trained to debate.

I think this is why so many Jewish people become lawyers because, I mean, a dinner activity is, you know, a debate.

There's no emotion in it. There's no hatred for the other person. It's just, okay, hey, you know, this one, you take the pro, you take the con, here's the topic, go for it.

And really what you're doing is honing the skills of sharpening your thinking, sharpening your rhetoric, sharpening your critical thinking skills, because those are invaluable in life.

And so many Jewish families will do stuff like that. And so it's just, it's like a family entertainment.

You don't, you know, where so many people nowadays think like if you disagree, you hate the person. It doesn't have to be that way.

And so we want to display some of that as well. And I think it's interesting.

Like, for example, with tonight's episode, I'm sure I'm going to catch, I'm sure I'm going to catch some flack.

But I have no problem saying that, you know, like, because I've had a lot of experiences talking with lots of different people.

I like your show. I think the three of you, Anthony, yourself, and Justin, have a great chemistry going on.

I did not dislike, and I do not dislike any of you, nor do I dislike

Matt. I don't dislike Sai. Sai's been on the podcast.

I was interacting with him a bunch on Twitter saying, hey Sai, come on back on. I want to talk to you again. Because I don't dislike him.

There are some Christians who I believe are reprehensible.

And I've mentioned a couple of those names. There are more. There are also Christians, there are people who

I will call professing Christians, who I believe are dishonest, and they know they're lying to people.

I don't particularly like those people. I don't look at none of the discussions at times that I've been on your show, and I would never call this a debate because we are truly just talking.

But even when I was chatting with Matt Slick, you would put on debates Michael, and I'm like, are we debating?

I thought we were just having a chat. Because that term can carry so much baggage.

I agree with what you're saying. It can carry a lot of baggage. And some of that can be real negative. I much prefer having conversations with people.

And I said, I like your show. I've watched other episodes. I think the difference is the capacity to have a differing opinion, but still have a respect for an individual.

And after that is done, still be able to have a civil discourse. I tried doing that with Maddox and Smokey Saint.

I will not speak to Smokey Saint again because of how he was with me and actually how he was with my debate partner as well.

He was reprehensible. But there are other people that I can still have those talks with.

I think the talks are important. From an outsider's perspective, and I think it was my wife who asked me, she was like, what would you think this show,

Apologetics Live, what does that mean? She's like, what's this show about? And I sat and I thought about it for about 10 seconds.

And I said, well, we actually chatted about this the last time I was on. And from my perspective, from an outsider's perspective, a filthy heathen, it seems like you're trying to, and you alluded to some of it, but to even make it simpler and maybe to put a little bit of a spin on it, it sounds like you're trying to show people and teach people how to be prepared for conversations, still be decent about it, but be prepared and also fulfill their obligation under 1

Peter 3 .15. Is that fair? Yeah, I may take that as a slogan.

So I might have to get your… No, I mean, that is what it is. We're trying to teach apologetics, but not just, okay, let's sit in a class and go over it, or to just watch some debate.

It's really, let's have a discussion, which is a debate. When you're disagreeing, you're making a case, you're making arguments.

There's nothing wrong with that. And so that's what we're doing. But what we're trying to do is, okay, time out, let's explain this.

Or ask, why would you say something like this? Why would someone ask this question? Because I do want it to be something that people are learning.

I want people to improve in their critical thinking. I want people to improve in their use of logic.

One of the biggest problems we have is people don't understand logic. It drives me nuts when you have people just throwing out logical fallacies.

They know the name, and they don't even know what it means. You know, you just made an ad hominem. Really? I didn't say anything about you.

Like, no, no, no, you said it's wrong. Yeah, but you don't know what an ad hominem is. It is when

I ignore your argument to make a personal attack against you, to basically saying that we're going to not deal with your argument.

If I say, well, you're an idiot, well, then what am I doing? I'm saying, like, I'm not even going to answer your question, but I'm attacking your character to say that I'm not worthy of answering the question.

There's a big difference between your argument is stupid and you're stupid. Correct. That would be a good way of putting it.

And that's valid, because people can say things that are dumb.

I hear lots of people say dumb things. But, you know, you try to be a little more light handed if the situation calls for it.

And I think you would probably act the same way. I think it depends on how you're approached.

If someone comes up to you puffed up in an aggressive manner, you're probably more likely to be a little bit more aggressive in your response, or even how you handle that person.

But if someone comes at you a little lighter and says, hey, I want to talk to you about this thing, then like as we have,

I don't look at you as some kind of big bad ogre. And we can have these types of conversations.

One of the things that I want to talk about, and I want to give you the ability to talk about, is

I've marked a couple in my podcatcher, but I haven't downloaded or listened to any yet.

So you have this thing called the Christian podcast community. Talk about that a little bit.

How did that get started? Well, that was, the way that actually got started was, we had a guy who worked for Striving Fraternity.

He did a podcast, and really what ended up happening was, it started out with, we're a discipling ministry.

We want to disciple people. We were looking to disciple different people that were getting into ministry to basically help them, you know, not make the mistakes that so many people make that we made when we started out.

So it was just really a way of, hey, come under our wing. We help you get set up, and then we let you go.

And after a year, he was like, well, I don't want to go. I want to stay permanent. So we kind of said, okay, how is this going to fit in with our model?

You know, we don't do podcasts. How does this fit? Well, we're discipling.

So we created a network so that we had a way of, at least my vision was that we had a way to disciple podcasters to improve their podcast.

And he ended up, after another year, deciding he wanted to go out on his own. But we still had this model.

And so we ended up saying, well, let's create a community. So it's not a network.

It's a community so that we see a distinction there. It's more that we're providing services or a platform rather than controlling content and being publishers.

And so we have a vetting process. We actually reject more than we accept.

And we've got, I think, close to 40 podcasts right now. I couldn't be on the

Christian podcast. No, you wouldn't be able to get on that. Sorry. I think it's that first term,

Christian. You're kind of stuck there. Okay.

Accepted. Now, you may want to say, okay, you're going to create the atheist podcast community.

You want to be more restrictive of the Canadian atheist podcast community. You know what? I'm too lazy to do that.

In some ways, I'm envious because I'm just too lazy to do any of it. I use GarageBand on my

MacBook because it's super easy. Oh, no. No, I find

GarageBand to be – it's not intuitive to me. For me,

I would use Audacity or things like that. I know a lot of people that use that.

Yeah. But we just wanted to have a way that we could disciple people to improve with their podcasts.

I mean, I have several podcasts. We've been talking here about Apologetics Live, but I do

Andrew Rapport's Rap Report. It's not about rap music. It's a play on my last name.

You don't like Fox is what you're saying. Yeah, no, no. You definitely don't want to hear that. But that's going to deal with Christian issues.

We have a podcast called So You Want to Be a Podcaster that is designed for people that want to do podcasting.

Not necessarily Christian, but we don't shy away from our beliefs, but we're helping people to develop their own podcast.

We go through taking the years of experience that I have, the technology background that I have, to try to use that to help people improve.

And so we're doing stuff like that. We have a podcast.

I have one called Theology Throwdown, which is all the podcasters in the Christian podcast community. We get together.

We discuss different topics that we disagree on or may disagree on. It helps people to teach them about the subject matter.

But at the same time, we're showing that we could disagree in love and charity. We're not hating one another and doing name calling, things like that.

And I think that's a valuable thing to display for folks. And that's what you see me display on Apologetics Live.

Absolutely. Without question. I have, I think, about five podcasts.

One's kind of in hiatus. That's my two -minute Monday through Friday podcast. I've kind of just put that on hold, just being a little bit too busy.

Too busy for two minutes? Man. Actually, the two -minute podcast takes more than you might think, because it may take two minutes to record if you get it done in one take.

But the reality is then, because it's two minutes, I usually transcribe it and put that into the show notes.

And so that then it's in written form, it's in audio form. And so I don't do it in video form because I have to retake it a number of times.

But actually, what takes more of the two -minute is, and people who haven't done that, it is easy to do a topic and speak for 20, 30, 40 minutes.

It is much harder to take everything down, put it into two to five minutes. You have to be a lot more concise.

You've got to know what you're going to say. Two minutes is really quick. To pack it in with information, you have to be really, really articulate.

And that's the skill set that that ends up teaching me. I don't know if you're familiar with Living Water's Ray Comfort.

I went out there to do their filming. They have a university, what they call a university,

I think. But they have these classes and they have hundreds of different apologists from around the world coming in.

And they record them on different, they want short, like six, seven -minute answers to these really big questions.

And I went in there once. It was Dr. Silvestro and myself. We go in for recording. And he is trying to get it down to seven minutes.

He's going like 10, 12 minutes. Where I ended up realizing when

I went in, I'm nailing it. Like everything is within five minutes. And they were just like, wow.

But why? It's because I actually, by doing that two -minute podcast, I had to be super, super concise.

So when they say, okay, we want it six, seven minutes, I can do that. It's a lap of luxury.

I got all the time in the world. Yeah, I got three times the normal time. Let's do it. It's funny. So my wife just started a podcast recently called

Theories of Evolution. It has nothing to do with evolution. It's a play on words. Her name is Shannon. And it's about this whole thing from being to becoming.

And it's about journeys and stuff like that. Again, nothing to do with actual biological evolution.

Anyway, when I first started this with Dean and we'd go for, you know, an hour and a half. And she was like, how are you talking so long?

And then she's like, I'm starting this podcast. They're going to be 30 minutes long. She hasn't done one less than an hour yet. Because, you know, she gets into this and she gets the discussion going and everything like that.

And I'm like, ha ha, see, see. And, you know, the only thing I got out of it was I did all the work for the studio.

And I say this tongue in cheek because I love her to death. And, you know, of course, she's welcome to do whatever she wants. You know, and I get to be her producer.

You know, just helping her setting up a little bit. But that's interesting that you say that.

Because there is, you know, there's the pre -production and the post -production and all the other stuff that goes into that. And then putting together a thumbnail and doing a this and doing a that.

And the first couple, she was like, it's a lot of work. I'm like, yeah, it's not insignificant.

It's not insignificant from a work perspective. Well, this is the reason that the average podcast has seven episodes.

People drop off by episode eight. Why? Some run out of ideas.

Some run out of time. But that's the majority of it. People think that it's just getting behind a microphone and speaking.

It's much more than that. And that's one of the reasons we want people to actually, okay, you want a podcast.

Do you know the commitment? We talk about that so that they understand this is what I'm signing up for if I really want to do podcasting.

Because when you start out and you have no audience, I'm in a little bit of a different category because, you know,

I do have a platform outside of podcasting. I travel internationally and speak.

So I end up getting more downloads than someone that's just starting out. Because, you know, as I go places, it's like, oh, you have a podcast?

I want to listen. But when you're starting out, you got to create that. And that, when you say marketing, is really difficult.

It's difficult because now there's such an overwhelming number of podcasts out there that on any subject, you probably can find a podcast.

So the thing is, is how do you differentiate yourself so that people would say,

I want to listen to this over all these others. And, you know, it's like you got to find your own niche.

And for some people, it's a hobby. There's some people that they don't care if anyone really listens. They enjoy not necessarily hearing themselves speak, but they enjoy teaching what they know, whether there's a bunch of people listen or no one.

And one of the things I always tell people is, you know, in our community, you have to understand that half of the podcasts in the world get less than 200 downloads an episode.

Even that number surprises me. Yeah. But our smallest podcasts are at that.

And I think that's what we end up bringing to the table because, you know, we have a lot of bigger podcasts that brings attention to even the smaller ones.

But we have the folks who have, you know, maybe 200 downloads, right?

So it would be in the top 50 percent of podcasts. And it's still hard to find a niche, shall we say, like when you're in a sea of other podcasts.

Yeah, you hit the nail right on the head there. I mean, we had it like I alluded to earlier. I'm not even alluded to it, but I flat out said if it had not been for Armin Navabi, we would be in that, you know, kind of 50, 100 downloads, you know, an episode.

And it's only because we got blasted out worldwide that we took off. And we don't monetize this in any way, shape or form.

I always tell people, you know, to go and donate to a charity or something like that instead.

You told me I had to pay you five bucks to be on there. Yeah. It's just that kind of thing where, you know,

I'm in it for the activism alone as well as Dean. And it's just, you know, happy to.

Yeah. And the thing is, is, you know, when you have an audience and this thing I tell our folks, if you have 200 people downloading and some people be like, oh, you know, even if you have 50, would you be cool with going every week?

You know, to some building, speaking of 50 people, you go to the library wherever and know that you're going to speak and 50 people are going to show up every week.

Yeah, that'd be kind of cool. You're doing that. You know, that's really what you're doing. Yeah. No, it is.

And that's an interesting way of looking at it. So that's really cool. So how many podcasts are in the

Christmas podcast community? I think I want to say close to 40 because there's a couple that I don't know if they've been added yet.

And I know once they're all added, we're at 40. I think we got over 1 .5

million downloads so far. That's amazing. I'm definitely going to reach out to some of them and ask them if they would like to collaborate a little bit, too.

I love hearing other people's stories. And like I said,

I think there'll be some people who listen to this and be like, ah, yeah, I'll get the emails. Well, you know, you softballed the whole thing.

And that's never what this was going to be about. And so, yeah, but I'm still fine with that.

Like I said, I much more enjoy the conversation. Yeah, and people can subscribe to actually Christian Podcast Community.

It is its own feed, and that has everyone that hosts with us. And the reason

I say it that way is because the way we have it set up, we're not controlling content.

So we have some people that host with us and some that don't. And so those that don't, we may or may not put them on the main feed.

Right now, I think most of them end up coming through the main feed, but we don't guarantee that.

Well, I've tried to push the stop button, and before we say a proper goodbye, I'm going to make sure I get those links. And for everybody listening, all the links to everything that Andrew and I have talked about will be in the description.

So you can go and check that out because I definitely encourage that. But I know, like I said, I know that your time is precious, and I've actually kept you longer than our, quote -unquote, scheduled time.

So, Andrew, I want to let you have the last word, and then I want you to put out there any way that you want for people to get in touch with you should they want to reach out to you.

Well, sure. I appreciate it. You know, I appreciate our dialogues, even in areas.

This, on your show tonight, was not so much of a, hey, let's discuss morality or something like that, which we've done on Apologetics Live for two hours discussing different topics.

And there, we're going to get lots more disagreement. But still, even with the disagreement,

I find you to be respectful. The conversation is good. You will try to at least engage with what people are saying.

That's one of the things people don't do enough is to really be able to make other people's arguments. It's, you know, it's just the reason we end up having everyone just yelling at one another.

But if anyone wants to get a hold of me, strivingforeternity .org is the website.

There is a way to contact the ministry, and, you know, that's how you contacted me. And it will get forwarded over to me if it's obviously meant for me.

And so, you know, if you go to strivingforeternity .org, that's the best place. If you want to check out the

Christian Podcast Community, just go to christianpodcastcommunity .org. Both of those work to get to those.

Their Christian Podcast Community is a ministry of Striving Fraternity. If you want to check out any of my books, they're available at Striving Fraternity.

So I am working on a new book, trying to work on it, on the deity of Christ.

But right now, it's bad to say this as an author, I hate writing. I absolutely hate writing.

I love study. I don't like the writing process. If I had someone that I could do all the study and they can wordsmith it,

I'd probably be happy. But, yeah, so I'm always working on projects, but we have free courses online in our academy that people can take.

It deals with systematic theology, how to interpret the Bible, world religions, things like that.

So we offer those free on YouTube. So we, you know, and then if there's, at least if there's

Christians out on your program that are interested in having me come speak, they can contact me through the ministry.

I'm traveling at least half the year, because I limit it to that. Well, and there are for sure, and for those people, you know,

I'm talking to you now. Yeah, and Andrews, of course, you've heard this. You've probably watched the other episodes with me on Apologetics.

Reach out to him and to everybody else who's a filthy heathen like me.

You can reach out to Andrew. You can have a conversation. Be respectful. Be polite. And you can have the same type of discourse that he and I have and disagree, but still be civil humans to each other.

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