CARM.org, Responding to 4 Weird Questions that Might Make You an Atheist

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00:03

Alright everybody, welcome to the first discussion, examination, review that I'm going to be doing along with friends on the issues here that relate to apologetics of Christian faith and others.

00:16

Tonight I'm going to be going online here with Eli Ayala. He's a well -known apologist.

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He's a great guy. We're going to be examining an atheist YouTube video called

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Four Weird Questions That Might Make You an Atheist. So we're doing that. What I'm going to do is get him on right now and you can take a look at him while I'm explaining that.

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What we're going to be doing is going to the video and then he and I are going to be stopping at periodic times to make comments.

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This particular video has four questions. Now I have not seen the video but Eli has.

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Unlike Eli, I don't have any spare time. I can't just sit around doing nothing and he just sits around.

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He doesn't do much. But I've been so busy so I figured it might be good that I haven't seen it.

01:03

He has and we're going to go through this stuff. So anyway, here we go Eli. Why don't you introduce yourself, how people get a hold of you and we'll just start in this thing.

01:12

Yeah, well my name is Eli Ayala. I am the founder of Revealed Apologetics which is a

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Christian YouTube channel with a focus on apologetics generally speaking and with a main focus on presuppositional apologetics, how to apply it in various contexts.

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I try to defend that methodology and answer all sorts of questions relating to that methodology.

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I also have a website. Folks can check out some articles that I've written and they could do all sorts of things there.

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I've got courses that are found there and that's how people get in touch with me if they want to reach me for speaking engagements and things like that.

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So that's about it. Good, good stuff. Eli's one of the guys

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I was hoping that somehow, someway he'd be able to work with Karm. He's one of the few guys, actually

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I'm going to praise you up here a little bit Eli. How old are you incidentally? How old are you?

02:05

I'm 42. He's 42. I'm 67. I've been around the block a few times.

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I think he's been around once. I'm still on my way around the block. So I've learned a great deal and there's not too many people that I know that I can go to and say, hey let me run something by you.

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See what your attitude or your input, your response to this might be.

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He's one of the few guys that I can trust that way and so there you go Eli. Thank you. I have just a couple, three guys

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I can do that with who know stuff. I could just ask questions about to see what how it sounds to them as well.

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See if my ideas are on par. I actually use you as a good sounding board brother. I appreciate that.

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All right, you ready to get started? We're just going to jump right in and I just want to hear where to get this

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URL. Where to find this URL so people can look at it. We'll figure that out later.

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All right, so here we go. Let's just jump in. Back when I was still a Christian but was beginning to explore. You want to stop right there?

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Just real quick. I started having questions about. There we go. So that it wasn't showing. Yeah, that's fine now.

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I had to hit the button trying to work it and I missed it There we go.

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All right. God popped into my head just annoyingly often. Those questions eventually piled up so high that I realized

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I really had to face them all head -on if I ever wanted to sleep again. I hoped that once I explored those questions rather than pushing them aside out of fear,

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I'd regain some sense of normalcy and that those nagging questions would just stop. That did and didn't happen.

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I eventually became an atheist and was no longer afraid of looking into hard questions about religion and God but the questions themselves just kept coming.

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They didn't occur to me at the same rate as when I was first questioning but they definitely didn't stop. Even today a few years later new questions still pop into my head pretty regularly.

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Over time though with the more obvious questions out of the way at the beginning, they've gotten a little more unique so I thought you guys might like to explore a few of those with me.

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I have a couple of notes before we begin as usual. These questions pertain. All right. I think that's important to keep in mind that a lot of people have questions that pop into their head and I know that in some contexts, and I know you're aware of this too

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Matt, that in certain churches in certain contexts questioning things is not encouraged.

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But I think that people should not run away from questions. We want to explore those questions.

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We want to surround ourselves with reliable people and good resources to be able to engage those difficult questions.

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And even with people struggling with doubt, you know, when I work with teenagers and things like this and I say that if you're gonna doubt, doubt towards God.

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Don't allow doubting to be something automatically that moves you away but rather it draws you closer to God in terms of searching and relying on Him to provide you with guidance in terms of finding answers.

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And so if you're going to doubt, doubt towards God. That would be my advice. But we shouldn't run away from from questions.

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And also go to karm .org and look up questions and see if you can answer them. Call the Rodeo Show.

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You can talk to Eli. You can talk to myself. There are answers to this stuff. Right. There are.

05:23

All right. Let's get going. Paying to a more Abrahamic idea of God as in one that is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and the creator of all that is.

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For brevity, I'll occasionally refer to this kind of God as tri -omni, as in embodying all the omni traits

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I just mentioned. These questions don't have much bearing on the concepts of gods to which many polytheists hold.

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I'm starting to make a comment. A lot of times atheists will say, they'll talk about the Trinitarian God and they'll say he's omnibenevolent.

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And I'll ask him what that means. Could you please define that? We understand what omniscience is and omnipotence, but what do you mean by omnibenevolence?

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Is there within the omnibenevolent issue, is there the capacity of God's anger and judgment?

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Because if he's all of something, can he not be something else? And I ask him about this. And this is where the wheels come off the cart.

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They're not really thinking through the issue here because what they want to do often is represent God, the

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Trinitarian God, by one of his attributes and elevate that above others. And then it's called a fallacy of composition,

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I believe, where they say this one part represents the whole. And then they say, well, how come God would do this? And they fail to understand some of the other issues.

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Maybe he's going to be doing the same thing. But anyway, that phrase omnibenevolent is a catchphrase that I've seen them use that way.

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Right. I also think what we should, because I know a lot of the people who watch your stuff and watch my stuff are going to be coming from a kind of a more presuppositional perspective.

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I think one thing that you want to catch is the generic nature of the God he's critiquing.

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Cornelius Van Til called this, when we talk about the God hypothesis or when we talk about kind of a generic theism, we're beginning,

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Van Til said, with an abstract universal. There's no content to that. It's very vague.

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And so once you fill in the data of the Christian God, many of these questions can actually easily be answered because we have the resources of knowing the details of this

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God and the revelation that he's provided. So again, when we're arguing for God or when people are critiquing

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God, we want to be specific with the sort of God that we're talking about. We're not talking about general theism as Christians.

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We are talking about the God of Scripture. Amen. In fact, one of the things I'll do in light of what you just said is

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I'll be talking to an atheist or atheist in a group chat room, wherever it is I go, and I'll talk about God generically.

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And I say, look, I don't defend God generically. I defend the Christian Trinitarian God, and I will agree with you that all other gods are invalid and not worth discussing, or we just dismiss them.

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There's only one we're going to be discussing, the Christian Trinitarian God. And this is significant because in Trinitarianism, we have a solution set to all kinds of other issues.

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Maybe you and I can get into that sometime and discuss that nature, because we talk about particulars and universals, the is of identity, is of predication.

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We could talk about other issues that relate to this kind of stuff that a lot of people are just not aware of. But maybe for another time.

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All right, let's get going. So I'm sorry that the title isn't 100 % accurate. It's just really hard to put all of those caveats into a workable title.

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So with all of that out of the way, let's get to it. Why did God communicate through literature? This one goes to anyone who thinks any piece of literature is the word of a tri -omni -god.

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Literature, by its very nature, demands interpretation. Intelligent people can read the same passage with the same good intentions and still come away with very different interpretations.

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Okay, I've got to jump in. What he doesn't seem to understand so far, having seen all of this, I don't know if he gets into the issue of hermeneutical principles and interpretative principles, because that's one of the things we've got to deal with.

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Any kind of a literature can be understood if we understand its context. One of the things I'll do with atheists when they say, you know, the

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Bible's written, it can be interpreted different ways, what I immediately start doing with them is whatever they say, I start interpreting it the way

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I want it to be interpreted. If they make any statement about the tri -omni -god can't exist, I'll say, no, I don't think I'm that handsome.

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Why? And what I'll do is I'll start saying whatever it is way off topic from what they're saying. And I say, look, if you say it's just a matter of wild interpretations and you can't really know what the truth is, then how do you recognize or how do you justify that you can actually communicate with me?

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Are you saying the Christian God is not able to communicate sufficiently to his people? It's a ridiculous claim and it doesn't have any merit to it.

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Right. And when I first heard this, I was like, well, what's wrong with language? I mean, if you have a problem with literature, then would you prefer that God communicated audibly?

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Well, if he's communicating with words, whether it's or spoken, you're always going to have the risk of misinterpretation.

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And that's not the function of the un -clarity of language. That's due to the individual.

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Isn't that right? I mean, you could misinterpret written words. You could misinterpret spoken words.

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But even with that reality, Matt, it doesn't logically follow that language is not a sufficient mechanism to convey truth because he's doing that right now.

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Well, that's that's true. And the fact that I was going to put this that when we use words,

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OK, unless you're assuming a sort of linguistic agnosticism in terms of which language can't convey meaning.

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All right. Once you go that route, you now refuted yourself on the one hand. If you say, well, wait a minute.

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Well, we could understand some things. Then you're admitting that there are standards of interpreting words in which it's possible to know what someone is saying.

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And so you refute yourself that way. So I don't think it's a problem at all to say that God communicated through.

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I'm not even going to use literature. He has. But language, I think language is a sufficient mechanism.

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And I think that should be a starting point for us, Matt. I think that should be a presupposition. I presuppose as an essential feature of my worldview that God has used language as a sufficient mechanism to convey truth.

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If a person wants to challenge that, I would be interested in seeing how they would do that without refuting themselves. Yeah. And then we have the subjectivity of what meaning we can have assigned to varying, varying sentences and varying context and things like that, which implies then if he's going to say that this is a problem there, why is it not a problem with himself?

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So I see an inconsistency there, which is often the case with atheists. Ready? It's meaning we're flawed beings with abilities of perception limited to the subjective alone.

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Communication through literature always leads to varying understandings of that literature. If God authored a piece of literature, then that means that literature has an intended meaning, but that humans are bound to interpret it in differing ways, many of them missing the intended meaning.

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But they do that because of their sin that they have within themselves, that they are not in tune with what

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God is saying. So the reason that this is occurring, actually his criticism is a support of the entrance of sin into the world, according to scripture, that clouds the mind, which is called the noetic effect of sin.

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And there are too many people and cults and various religious systems and even atheistic ones who go to the Word of God and then use varying prejudices and their faulty presuppositions to deny what the

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Word of God clearly says. Now, granted, there are some areas of scripture which are difficult to understand, and it takes practice, interpretation, and skill.

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But that's the nature of God's Word. Furthermore, would he be saying that and implying that God must communicate in such a base level without any levels of meaning, that God just has to communicate like a recipe book?

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Well, that wouldn't be the case. And if he doesn't like the idea that God communicates via literature as a word of mouth which can change, which can be lost, then he'd be saying, well, why didn't

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God write it down? Okay, so he writes it down and it's sufficiently communicated to us that we can understand what it means.

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Now, I would just suggest if this atheist, another atheist listening to this, want to have Bible studies with me, or maybe

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Eli too, we can go through how to interpret scripture and I can tell you what it actually means. I'd be open to do that.

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And it just simply doesn't follow, too, that the existence of multiple interpretations doesn't logically follow that therefore someone can't have the correct interpretation, nor does it follow that someone can't be justified in the particular interpretation that they're asserting.

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It's just a complete non sequitur from a logical perspective. It's kind of like giving, you know, if I were to give my students a math test and they gave me different answers to what is 2 plus 2 and I look at the answers,

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I'm like, oh, well, I guess we can't know what 2 plus 2 is because there are different answers. I mean, it just doesn't follow.

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That's a fallacy on the one hand, and on the other hand, it shouldn't lead you to atheism, right?

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I mean, it doesn't follow at all. It should lead you to study. So what is it meant and how does it work?

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Yeah, it's simple. But some of us study a lot more than others. That is true.

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Yeah, that's right. Here we go. First glance, this seems to only reveal a flaw in human nature, but upon deeper consideration, it reveals flaws in any authoring tri -omni -gods.

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As I'm sure you know, countless sects of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism exist varying wildly in practice, often due to differing interpretations.

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Well, Abhi, stop right there. How does that show a weakness in God? What if God used language in his all -knowing nature, knowing that it is a sufficient mechanism to convey truth and that man will distort his works?

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I think we're losing you a little bit. I mean, why can't that be an option? I mean, why? Okay. Oh, can you hear me now?

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Yeah, back up 10 seconds or 20 seconds. Go ahead. Yeah, I'm saying, why does this reveal a weakness in the creator?

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What if the all -knowing creator chose language as a sufficient mechanism to convey truth and that he knew that people would distort his words, not because his words are unclear, but because men suppress the truth and unrighteousness?

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I mean, why can't that be an option? I mean, it just doesn't follow that it's a weakness in God. That's right.

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And also it could be a strength of God and a purposely designed method of God to have people twist the word of God and deny the word of God on their own, according to their own freedom, their own wills.

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So the judgment of God upon them is just because they've seen his word, they deny his word, and then they say, look, all these different things can happen because of that word.

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See how insufficient, God, you are in the creation of your word. This could be one of the means that God has ordained in the world to separate the sheep from the goats, because Jesus says in John 10, 27, my sheep hear my voice and they follow after me and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish.

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And so those who are not the sheep don't get the word. So they're going to be criticizing and saying it's God's fault.

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And that's what happens. It's like Adam saying to God, well, it's the woman you gave me.

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So instead of holding responsibility for your own actions, lack of ability to understand something and just say, look, it's

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God's fault because he can't do this. And then say, this is why he can't exist or it's a difficult question. Just shows, in my opinion, that it's not a very deep thinking process and it's a moral problem and you haven't really considered what some of the other options might be for it.

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That's just my opinion. Now, there are a couple of things too. If God spoke to us, that could be misinterpreted and people would complain, why didn't he write it down?

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When God writes to us, that could be misinterpreted and people complain, why did he have to write it down?

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If God implants the knowledge within us such that we know it, then people complain, well, that destroys our free will.

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I mean, God loses no matter what, because the issue is not God per se. It is that people don't want to believe the words of God.

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Instead of saying the woman you gave me, the word you gave me.

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Right, right. And I don't know this particular individual, but I'm thinking of someone like a Matt Dillahunty, for example, whose standard of skepticism, right?

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If God did it some other way via a miracle, I don't know the level of skepticism this person has, but that wouldn't even be enough for Matt.

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I even heard him say once that he can't be epistemically certain that he exists.

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So how do you give evidence to someone who thinks that they could be wrong about their own existence? I mean, you see what

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I'm saying? So it doesn't matter what God does. I mean, if you set up a system in terms of which

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God is excluded from the outset, I mean, you're really not getting anywhere. I'm not saying that's what he's doing, but many skeptics do do that.

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Right. Well, in that case, we need to examine the basic assumptions in their worldview and see if they can justify them.

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They can't, and then we can put them in the right direction. All right, here we go. This inarguably leads to suffering.

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War between various sects entirely aside, I'll give an example. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the

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Bible forbids the ingestion of any blood, including life -saving blood transfusions. If they're right, that means that they're obeying

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God's will and won't be punished for violating it. Jehovah's Witnesses altered the Bible. Charles Taze Russell started that cult.

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Even Christianity says it's a cult. It denies the basis of the Christian faith. He didn't like the idea of hell, eternal torment, and things like that.

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And the Jehovah's Witness organization has severely altered the word of God to make it fit what he wants. I'm surprised he'd bring up the

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Jehovah's Witnesses as though they're actually Christians. He doesn't understand the Christian faith. Now, he would say he would probably say to you, well, that's your interpretation.

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And I think the assumption is, well, if the Jehovah's Witness has an interpretation and they think it's right,

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OK, then they're following God. Yes, they would be following God if their interpretation is correct.

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But what is he missing? He's assuming that they can't be demonstrated to be wrong. Because words have meaning, we can go and we can take them to the mat on the text.

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But he doesn't think the text can have meaning, which is not a problem of the text. It's a problem of his view of the text.

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Amen. Good stuff. Majority of Christians who aren't JWs are further separated from God or even punished for not understanding the text.

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If JWs have themselves misunderstood the Bible, though, most Christians are just fine.

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While the JWs misunderstanding of God's word has them dying preventable deaths.

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There are countless contradictory interpretations. People don't die simply for misinterpreting a text.

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This is kind of like saying what happens to people who live in the deepest, darkest jungle? They go to hell for nothing more than simply being ignorant of Jesus.

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No, people go to hell because of their sin. And it is a sin to sinfully misinterpret and twist

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God's word. Those who are under the teaching of deceivers, who are never saved, are not punished because of their misinterpretation.

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They were never Christians to begin with. And so they're punished for their sins. People are still sinners, whether they're deceived or not.

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Right. And that's what they're punished for. It's not simply for misinterpreting words in a page. Right.

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You know, I just thought of something, you know, I'd like to see some of these videos going after specifically the Christian God.

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Now, one of the things I found out among many atheists is they don't understand Christian theology. They think they do, and they just start attacking.

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Well, if they're going to start attacking a generic God, a one -person God, a binitarian God, a polytheistic, panentheistic, whatever it might be, then, well, they're not tackling the

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Christian faith. So I'm hoping we can find some atheists who have specific issues with specific

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Christian stuff and to see if they know what they're teaching. One of the things I've been doing over the past year or two on Discord and Clubhouse and other venues,

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I'll talk to atheists and I'll say, you know, I try to be polite. I honestly try to be polite. I say, look, I appreciate that you can pretty much get the

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Christian faith right in some areas, but there's a lot of areas you're not aware of, particularly in this topic.

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If you're willing, I'd like to sit with you or over the phone, whatever, here, and we could just talk.

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I'll teach you what we really believe. Not a single atheist has ever taken me up on it. Not one has ever said, okay, let's see what you really teach.

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And this is significant because when I discuss Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses or Islam, Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, I want to know what their position is.

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And if someone says, Matt, you don't understand our position, I take it very seriously. Well, okay, then what is your position?

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I stop what I'm doing. Please tell me what it is. I'm open. I don't see the atheists having that same kind of openness.

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They basically say they understand what the issues really are. They're not going to be corrected. They're not going to grow.

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They're not going to learn. They're just going to proclaim. And I don't know if this guy's like that. He seems like a nice guy. But I've noticed that a great deal, that that seems to be one of the problems that occurs.

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He does seem like a nice guy. I did see a video with him where he interacted with Sean McDowell, who either he came on his show or he was invited on, and they had a very respectful discussion.

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So he seems like a person who argues in good faith. But nevertheless, I mean, his arguments are they're baked.

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There's a fallacy is baked into everything he's saying. But nevertheless, we can continue.

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Yeah, it's out there. Many leading to the kind of unnecessary suffering I mentioned.

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If how does he know what's unnecessary suffering? That's always something. How do you know what's unnecessary?

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What standard do they have? I wish they say what is and is not necessary suffering. Oh, you can't know if it's if it's unnecessary unless, you know, the kind of the unseen behind the scene factors right within the

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Christian world. Because we believe in a God who's ordained everything that comes to pass. There's no such thing as unnecessary suffering or purposeless suffering within a world in which

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God is sovereign. Everything has a purpose, whether we know what that purpose is or not. So he's just assuming kind of a generic

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God that doesn't have the features of creating a world in which suffering is never purposeless or unnecessary.

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That's another thing is because what appears to be doing so many atheists do is they just lump all gods onto one basic God idea and then attack that.

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And I've specifically requested atheists to learn Christian theology and interact with Christian theology, not these abstract concepts.

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And you kind of mentioned that at the beginning. But let's get going here. If God authored or inspired such a text, he either couldn't do any better, didn't know the suffering he would cause, or didn't care if suffering resulted.

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Or he had a sovereign plan with it exactly the way it is to bring to bear those who would rest his scriptures to their own destruction because they, in their sinfulness, are resisting him.

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That's another option. Why does he include that in there? Right. Well, because he doesn't have to, because he's not critiquing

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Christianity. He's critiquing, as pastor Doug Wilson said, a fuzzy benevolence in the sky.

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We don't really, it's the Abrahamic gods, I mean, whatever that means, right?

24:14

Yeah. It's a lot of times that I'll do with atheists like him, I'm not saying one of these kind,

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I'm not trying to be derogatory. But what I'll do is I say, can you give me more specifics on this God that you're proposing here that you're attacking?

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And there's a lot of questions that I can ask about the nature of God, his work attributes, coherence, eternality, capacity, and things like this.

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They don't seem to really have thought these things through. And I tell them, you need to know these things if you're going to be dealing with this kind of questions.

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And you go public, you're going to be cross -examined. Are you able to deal with these kinds of issues? And I ask them again, do you want to learn what the

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Christian perspective is? So you can try and attack that, and then we can deal with that. But they never take it up, take me up on it.

24:55

All right. Couldn't do better communicating in a medium immune to misinterpretation than he is an omnipotent.

25:03

What is that medium? God couldn't use a medium that doesn't suffer from misinterpretation.

25:12

What is that medium? Other than removing all means of freedom and just forcing you to understand what he means.

25:20

Oh, CNN. Yeah. CNN is perfectly clear and truthful and accurate all the time.

25:28

Yeah. Neither is Fox, folks. All right. Yeah. What is that medium? Is he offering?

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Another thing a lot of atheists like to do is ask questions, but they don't really want to face the answers.

25:41

And they think their questions are really good questions when I'm not necessarily.

25:47

They don't seem to know how to respond to potential difficulties with their own issues.

25:54

That means to me, they haven't thought these things through very much. He would cause he's not omniscient.

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If he didn't care if suffering resulted, he's not omnibenevolent. Any way you cut it, you can't consider the author of such a text to be anything close to a tri -omnigod.

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Of course, there's a reasonable explanation for the flawed nature of sacred texts. Maybe they were just written by human inspiration alone and no god was ever involved.

26:21

Shouldn't you worship? Wait a minute. Then how would you account for the prophecies in the Old Testament, for example, out of Daniel chapter 9, 24 to 27, where the prophecy is that after 69 weeks and seven weeks that the

26:34

Messiah will come in to Jerusalem. And from the issuing of the decree of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the walls of Jerusalem, which occurred in March 14th, 445

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BC, which is 173 ,880 days later is when Jesus came in.

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How does it just non -inspired people? Well, we don't know when Daniel was written, of course.

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We don't know. It could be interpreted in so many ways. That's right.

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And also blue sleeps faster than Wednesday. That's right. Cruelest God imaginable.

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This is for fans of Pascal's wager, which is a pragmatic, not evidential argument for belief in God over disbelief.

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Just for review, the argument goes, if God doesn't exist, a believer suffers only a finite loss in death.

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But if he does exist, a believer enjoys an infinite gain in heaven. Meanwhile, if a person does not,

27:27

I have some thoughts here, Matt, and this critique, and I guess we'll listen to the rest. I actually find myself agreeing with the atheist here, though not for different reasons than one might think.

27:39

I think from a biblical perspective, we shouldn't argue as though the

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Bible might be false, or as if people are in a neutral state of ignorance regarding God.

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So the Bible teaches us that all people inherently know that God exists. He's made himself known. He's made himself evident.

27:58

Watch this. And this is in the NASB translation. He's made himself evident, not to them, but within them.

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Romans 1, 19 through 21, because that which is known about God is plain to them, because God made it evident within them, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly seen and being understood through what has been made.

28:20

And the key phrase there is evident within them. And that's derived from the Greek, the phaneron estin en autois.

28:28

Phaneron means evident or manifest, en autois, literally in them.

28:35

That's the in them, which is actually a refutation of many classical apologists who use

28:41

Romans 1 to assert that it is teaching natural theology. Romans 1 is not teaching natural theology.

28:49

It's teaching natural revelation. Natural theology is what we do. We reason about God based upon what we observe.

28:55

Natural revelation is what God does, and God reveals himself within them.

29:01

And so all that to say, if the Bible teaches that all men have a knowledge of God such that they are unapologetus, literally without an apologetic, okay, then we shouldn't be using arguments like Pascal's wager.

29:14

We don't know if God exists, but he's the best bet, right? You see, I think the very use of that argument opens you up to the sorts of criticisms that he's going to use.

29:25

That is the danger of arguing for an ambiguous, fuzzy benevolence in the sky. And when you use arguments like Pascal's wager, you leave yourself wide open to be criticized rightly,

29:35

I think. Those are my thoughts. Good, good thoughts. Well said. See, we're already half hour into this.

29:42

We're a third through, so let's move along. And they're right. They stand to gain just finite luxuries on earth.

29:48

But if they're wrong, they stand to suffer infinitely in hell. Therefore, a rational person would seek to believe.

29:55

What's that? You don't have the image up on the screen. Oh, that's right. I'm sorry.

30:01

Thank you. Yeah, they're just looking at our beautiful faces. Obviously, there's a false dichotomy here between the existence of a very specific

30:08

God and the non -existence of God. But let's explore the logic of this argument and see where it leads. Within the reasoning of this argument, the objectives of belief and worship are to gain pleasure and avoid pain.

30:20

The argument... What was that? He says,

30:25

I guess the purpose of that argument is to avoid pain and to experience pleasure or something like that.

30:30

I guess we want to go to heaven and experience pleasure. We want to avoid pain and not go to hell.

30:36

Well, it's not a bad motive. But I liked how he seems to be privileged to know a universal standard of what people ought to do and why they ought to do it.

30:45

That's interesting. Let's see if we can review that. The argument is purely an evaluation of risk considering, well, rather arbitrarily chosen supernatural factors.

31:09

There is a way to make this argument more powerful. They're not arbitrary. It's not arbitrary because he is assuming that the

31:15

God concept and multiple God concepts are equally non -evidential.

31:23

In other words, there's no evidence at all that can give you more warrant in believing one concept of God or another.

31:29

It's like, well, it could be any God. It doesn't matter. There's no evidence for it.

31:34

It's arbitrary. Well, no. If someone thinks there is powerful evidence for the existence of a specific

31:40

God, they might be more warranted in affirming that. But then again, you get back to the biblical consistency.

31:47

Do people need evidence for God if they already know that God exists? They know that God exists and there's evidence for God.

31:55

And part of that evidence is that they can't avoid him. That's powerful evidence. I'm reminded of a debate between Greg Bonson and Edward Tabash.

32:04

Greg Bonson and Edward Tabash, during the Q &A, someone says, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

32:11

What is your extraordinary proof for your God? And Greg Bonson bites the bullet. He says, that's very good.

32:17

I agree. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And here is my extraordinary proof that when you reject the

32:23

Christian worldview, you lose the foundation for any proof whatsoever. That's powerful evidence. That's transcendental evidence to which the atheist will respond.

32:31

Well, that's not real evidence because they want the microscope, put God in a test tube kind of evidence.

32:38

Nevertheless, you know, I debated him. Edward Tabash. I think you did. Okay. Yes. Yes. That was back in the day.

32:44

Yeah. Was that bearded? Was that bearded, Matt Slick? It might have been back in the day.

32:49

I got that from a challenge. You look so cool with a beard. I remember first time I ever saw you with a beard, you were debating a guy on abortion.

32:57

It was like in the audience or something. I was like, you look so cool there. Yeah. Then my wife said, no smooching.

33:03

If you got a beard, I go, okay. So it's gone. That's how that works. All right. Let's get back in there.

33:09

All right. Clevo. And it's through the consideration of slightly different factors.

33:16

Instead of creating a false dichotomy between one of the many popular concepts of a God and the non -existence of God, why not create a true dichotomy between belief in a

33:25

God with the best imaginable reward for believers and the worst imaginable punishment for doubters and every other religious position?

33:32

Why not invent a God who is as cruel as can possibly be imagined to doubters in order to do away with the false dichotomy and make the wager more persuasive?

33:42

See, if you believe in and worship the definitionally cruelest God, and you're right, you'll get to go to heaven.

33:48

What would make the wager more persuasive? I mean, even persuasion is subjective.

33:54

It's like asking someone, give me a persuasive argument for God's existence. That's impossible because there are subjective standards of what one finds persuasive.

34:03

Again, the whole thing is based on subjectivity. Yeah. Even if we weren't talking about Pascal's wager, we're talking about, like, give me a persuasive argument for God.

34:12

That's just a subjective requirement. And how would you know what the cruelest God is?

34:19

And what standard would you have by saying, he is the cruelest one? And what standard do you have by which you say, this is what cruelty will be and the cruelest?

34:27

So it sounds to me that it's a little myopic. It's a little narrow -minded and ill -informed.

34:34

What standard, again, what standard does he have by which you say, this is what a cruelest God will be?

34:39

These are serious questions, not just ambivalent questions where he has some fuzzy God up there and a cruel

34:45

God, you gotta worship him or not. I don't find these questions very challenging or very deep intellectually.

34:54

Yeah. All right. Won't go to the worst hell imaginable, you'll go to, at worst, a lesser hell.

35:02

If you don't believe in the definitionally cruelest God and you're right, you'll either go to a lesser heaven, a lesser hell, maybe you'll be reincarnated or maybe you'll go nowhere at all.

35:11

But if you're wrong, you'll go to the worst hell imaginable. So a reasonable person must believe in and worship the cruelest imaginable

35:20

God. This argument uses the same logic as Pascal's Wager and arguably even improves upon it by eliminating the false dichotomy.

35:27

So if you're an advocate for Pascal's Wager, being unconcerned with evidential arguments and more concerned with evaluating any conceivable risk, you should argue for the worship of the

35:37

God specifically crafted for this Wager. Okay, so if I was not a presuppositionalist and I was an evidentialist,

35:44

Pascal's Wager is not an argument that is not concerned with evidence. You could, in principle, from those frameworks, have more evidence for one

35:52

God over another, but not have absolute certainty and then move in the direction in which the specific

35:57

God who has more evidence, you place your faith in that one. He's just assuming that all

36:03

God concepts are equally without evidential basis, which is, again, that's a huge claim.

36:10

You'd have to argue that. There's literally no evidence for God. That's a huge claim. Yeah, what he needs to do is actually tackle the

36:17

Christian Trinitarian God. I would suggest, if he or other atheists want to do this, to go to the

36:22

CARM website, C -A -R -M dot O -R -G, and go to the Christian Theology section and read up on the

36:28

Christian Trinity, the Hypostatic Union, the Incarnation, things like that. Go check them out so that you can at least have a discussion on that, because I'll agree with the atheists.

36:37

All the other gods, dismiss them. Why bother? There's only one that we're going to argue for. They're not equally plausible once you examine them.

36:46

Right. The God of Islam is self -refuting. The pantheistic view has all kinds of logic problems with transcendental necessities, particulars, has all kinds of issues.

36:56

You and I discuss these kinds of things. You and I will call up each other and say, hey, what do you think of the issue of the is of identity and the is of predication that relates to primary and secondary substances?

37:07

Now, let me give an example. And then we're both going, oh, that's interesting. And we'll talk. Most people aren't trained like that and don't think like that.

37:13

And I'm not saying they're dumb or anything. But you and I enjoy that kind of a thing. And so what we do is we get into a little bit deeper areas of theological and logical perspective.

37:22

So I would like it to see. I'd like to see some atheists, maybe him, this gentleman here, if he were to take a deeper dive into Christian theology and say,

37:30

I'm going to tackle the Christian trinity alone. That would be interesting. I'd like to see that if he could do it.

37:36

All right. Let's get back to here. The God of Pascalianism.

37:42

Or, you know, you could realize that arguments like this, which are entirely unconcerned with the basis of their premises, fail to make any valuable point.

37:51

I want to shout out a friend of mine who is the creator and pope of Pascalianism. He's Cosmological on YouTube and at CosmologicalYT on Twitter.

37:59

He made a video about Pascal's Wager a couple years ago, where he made the case for Pascalianism. And I just thought it was hilarious and brilliant.

38:06

He doesn't make videos anymore, although I wish that he would start back up. But he is still on Twitter and is one of my favorite people to follow.

38:13

Give him a follow. The link to his Twitter is in the description. I don't think you'll regret it. This question delves into a bit of theology that all

38:23

Abrahamics share. God made animals with pain receptors. Many animals, especially the kinds we eat the most, can feel physical pain in exactly the same way as humans.

38:33

Many of those animals can and do suffer psychological trauma, just like humans as well. Yet, God not only condones people killing and eating animals, but he created animals with the capacity to suffer while already knowing full well that they would.

39:08

That wasn't the first time we met. We had met in New Jersey, but we both were invited to speak for a

39:16

Christian bookstore that was hosting an event at Texas A &M International back in the day.

39:24

My wife was like, I can't believe Matt Slick's in our car. We're so used to listening to his podcast.

39:30

Look at this. This is a really great memory for us. And Matt's like, OK. Who are you? We had a lot of good conversation.

39:37

You're like Thanos. You ever see the Avengers? You ever see the Avengers? Where this one character wants to fight

39:43

Thanos because Thanos killed her family and her whole life was building to this moment.

39:48

And she's like, I hate you. And Thanos just looks at her and goes, who are you? He's killed so many people.

39:54

He doesn't even know who she is. Who are you? That's right. Well, I get that a lot sometimes because a lot of people go, you're a bad guy.

40:00

I go, I'm a good guy. Yeah, sure. OK. I remember you were the third caller on September 15th of, you know,

40:07

OK, anyway, on the radio. You remember I talked to you last year? It's like, nope.

40:13

Sorry. OK, go ahead. Although you could never forget Excitable Craig.

40:19

That's old school right there. Remember Excitable Craig? Excitable Craig, he'd call up on the radio and he'd go,

40:28

I have a question. If God is eternal, where did

40:35

God come from? And once I got him to get excited, I said something and he actually went, and we all memorized.

40:46

It was the day that he, it was great. Yeah, Excitable Craig. Yep. Excitable Craig. Anyway, anyway, at that event at Texas A &M

40:54

University, I remember someone asked me a question about suffering. We were on a panel there and they were bringing up the pieces of paper, but they asked the question with an interesting caveat.

41:03

They requested that in answering their question, I shouldn't reference the fact that there's sin in the world and we live in a fallen world.

41:12

So the person tried to control how I answer. In other words, why is there suffering? And don't give me we live in a fallen world.

41:19

And of course, my response was, if you're going to ask me a question, don't dictate the manner in which I answer it.

41:24

What was implicit in their request was a demand for me to answer the question of suffering, but not in a way that is consistent with the

41:33

Christian worldview, right? The Bible explains suffering in light of the fall, and it's unreasonable to expect someone like me to not include that.

41:40

So according to the Christian worldview, suffering exists in the world, not just animal suffering, but human suffering, right?

41:46

Animal and human suffering. And the reason for that generically from a Christian perspective is that we do in fact live in a fallen world.

41:52

And this is a fundamental aspect of Christian teaching. Scripture tells us that when humanity broke

41:57

God's loss and entered the world, and it came with suffering, pain, death, you know, you have Romans 5, 12, so on and so forth.

42:04

The earth itself is described as groaning under the weight of this brokenness, right?

42:09

Longing for a day in which the earth itself will be restored. Now, until that time, we are going to experience suffering, human suffering, animal suffering, all these sorts of things.

42:19

Now, God has allowed, okay, the consequences of sin to play out throughout history.

42:27

But the Christian story also provides us a remedy for that suffering, right? We have a story of hope. Even if I can't give you every single instance as to why your puppy went through an instance of suffering, we have in the overall

42:40

Christian narrative a hope for the redemption of creation, right? So, you know, this issue of animal suffering fits perfectly well within a

42:52

Christian narrative, so to speak, a Christian worldview. Even though it might be difficult to kind of comprehend why in this particular instance and how this animal suffered and so forth, this definitely doesn't warrant atheism.

43:07

I don't see how that logically is connected at all. But there you go. Those are some of my thoughts there.

43:14

Yeah, let me add to that. Let me clear my throat first here. Hold on one second.

43:20

There we go. So a little bit of notes while you were talking there. Well, one, it's a created,

43:27

God created animals with a survival mechanism in them, and pain is a necessity for recognizing pain and I mean for surviving.

43:37

Okay, but here's the thing. God didn't create the world fallen. He created it good.

43:43

In his good world, I don't see any justification for pain and suffering.

43:48

This is how God created things. The animals would have been naturally there, wouldn't have any problems. All right. Now take

43:54

Adam and Eve, for example, when they were in the Garden of Eden, it wasn't until they started acting like atheists that it hit the fan and everything went bad.

44:03

What do I mean by that? Well, in Christianity, true Christian thought God's word is ultimate and God's word is a standard.

44:09

Now, when Satan came to Eve and said, well, did God really say what she was doing? And let me put words into her mouth and illustrate to make my point when she was saying, well, look,

44:18

I don't need to trust what God said. I can actually functionally work as though he's not there and decide for myself what is right and wrong and what ought and ought not be.

44:27

So then she decided for herself what was true and then sin entered the world and then suffering with it.

44:33

So I say to this one of the abilities of sin and pain and suffering, I say, well, that's because Adam and Eve acted like atheists.

44:40

And this is why we have these problems. If they had listened to God and done what he said, there wouldn't be any pain and suffering in the world.

44:47

So there you go. Yeah, you said it, too. You appeal to Genesis, right? We could even argue that God made animals vegetarian.

44:58

Yeah, but no, you can't affirm that because that's the traditional Genesis story.

45:03

And we all know that that's false because evolution is a proven fact. And, you know, we found animals with sharp teeth and sharp teeth.

45:10

Animals can't possibly be vegetarian. You know, Jason Lyle, Jason Lyle, someone

45:17

I think we both know. He says that, you know, animals had super like he's talking about dinosaurs, dinosaurs.

45:24

You know, before the fall, they had these super razor sharp teeth perfect for crushing and ripping through plants and fruit.

45:31

You know, you don't. But sharp teeth does not indicate the kind of food you are meant to eat necessarily.

45:38

It's interesting. He showed the skull of a fruit bat. That thing looked like a monster. And he's like, do you guys know what this is? And he's like, what's a fruit bat?

45:45

Yet it has these razor sharp teeth. So, again, it is a disbelief in the creation narrative that that kind of that's not an option for people.

45:54

So, yeah, they can't they can't relate to the story that God made things good and then sin screwed it up because obviously the

46:00

Adam and Eve in the garden and all that can't be true. Well, I just want to say thanks to the atheistic principles that led us here.

46:09

All the pain and suffering in the world. All right. Water and sacrifice animals to him just because he enjoyed the act of devotion.

46:19

This direct. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That is a that's that is such a bad view.

46:24

He doesn't understand the Christian perspective. It wasn't just because he enjoyed the worship that is that is assigning blame and sin to God for ill conceived motives.

46:34

He's not addressing the issue. The reason that the animal sacrifices occurred in the

46:39

Old Testament was to point to his own sacrifice. Jesus said in John 15, 13, greater love has no man than this, but he lay his life down for his friend.

46:48

The greatest act of love. God is love. First John four, eight was to lay your life down for others. The pointing of these sacrificial animals was simply pointing ahead to the sacrifice of God.

46:59

It was so he could demonstrate the greatest act of love and redeem those people whom he loves and who would trust in him.

47:05

It's not what this what this guy said. This really irks me. I see this so many times with the atheists do not understand the

47:11

Christian perspective. They don't understand the biblical theology that they they tease and they mock and I'm not trying to say guys mocking and all this bad stuff.

47:19

I see this so much and I wish that they would study biblical theology so that they could at least address the real issues, but they don't.

47:28

You know, I've written over 150 articles on atheism. I've debated atheists. I don't know how many times publicly, informally, formally, and I always learn and I'm always interacting with them.

47:40

Teach me what your perspective is. What's your particular perspective? Let me understand this and I try and learn from them.

47:47

I don't see that being followed by the atheist, at least the Christian perspective. I think it's easier for so many of them to just throw

47:54

God's under the bus and say, see, see how bad this is. They don't understand the issues.

48:00

They really should discuss this. Have you or me on their channel and we can discuss these things. Specifics.

48:07

Okay, let's get going here. You and I talk too much about this. We're just, you know, we get a lot going on.

48:14

Encouragement of the suffering of the innocent is entirely inconsistent with a tri -omni nature.

48:20

If God couldn't create a food cycle for all creatures that didn't include suffering, then he isn't omnipotent.

48:26

If he didn't know the system would lead to suffering, he isn't omniscient. Now, if he could have done better, if he could have made a food cycle that didn't promote suffering, but chose not to, he's not only lacking in omnibenevolence, but I would argue he's a sadist.

48:41

Or he has morally sufficient reasons for the suffering that he allows. That's a logical option too.

48:49

Or the reason suffering is in the world and God knew about it was because people are made in his image, have free will, and they are suffering the consequences of their own choices that they're acting upon, causing an effect on others as well.

49:03

Where does he want the suffering to stop? It's one of the things I've asked atheists. I've said, okay, let's say you want a suffering and all this bad stuff to end.

49:11

So you want to stop the murderer and you want to stop the rapist? Yeah, that's right. Well, what about the guy who thinks about murder and thinks about rape?

49:17

Should you stop him from thinking those things? Are those things evil? No, that's okay. Well, why is a line between there or between any other morally right or wrong views, which you don't have a universal standard by which you can say what is morally right or what ought to be stopped or why what suffering is unnecessary or anything?

49:34

I'm just so tired of the atheists who have such ambiguous ideas. They can't ground their theories.

49:39

They can't ground their reasons. They can't ground their presuppositions. They get on the pulpit and they say, look, this is where unnecessary suffering is.

49:47

This is why God is wrong because it's unnecessary. How do they know it's unnecessary? And when we look at the issue of the suffering that's in the world, it's because of atheistic principles where the independence from God has brought in the nature of sin into the world that led to the effect that he's now complaining about because of the same principles that instituted the whole thing to begin with.

50:07

I find huge inconsistencies. I think you would probably bring up when his next question, as you'll see, we'll wait there, but his next question would probably piggyback off of what you said as to, you know, yeah, we'll get into that.

50:21

Yeah, that's right. We could go in here. All right. Another explanation for this issue. Maybe God had nothing to do with the formation of the food chain and humans just made up a myth that morally justified killing animals so they could keep doing it without internal moral conflict.

50:35

Morally justified in killing animals like is he suggesting that it's wrong to kill animals like why would have to be morally justified?

50:44

It seems like he's assuming that there's something intrinsically wrong in killing animals. I wonder if there's actually there's actually a movement,

50:52

Matt, amongst many atheists, I think, called ethical veganism, where they they actually think it's wrong to eat animals because it causes suffering.

51:02

I know that there was. Don't eat them while they're alive. Eat them while they're dead.

51:08

Then there's no suffering. I don't know what's the problem here. Well, you got to eat. Well, yeah, but you can kill them in such a way that the animals don't even know what's happened to them.

51:18

It's just they don't even experience pain. I almost became a vegetarian.

51:25

My mom, my grandfather used to be a professional wrestler in Puerto Rico, but he was also he was he was he was he was he had the mask that looked like the notch, but it was white.

51:43

Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And he used to he used to wrestle and he used to cook. He was a cook. Also, he used to cook for the wrestlers and things like that.

51:50

And my mom told me that she was traumatized. The one time he was going to cook pork, he was going to cook a pernil, which is if you know

51:57

Spanish food, it's delicious pork. My mom was told to hold the pig down while my grandfather beat it to death so that he can cook it.

52:08

And she said, I'll tell you, Eli, the pig sounded like a small child. And I was so traumatized by that story.

52:14

I told my mom, that's it. I'm not eating meat. I lasted for three days. My mom made the craziest fried chicken.

52:23

It was so good. I was like, I give up. Give me the chicken. So I couldn't survive.

52:28

I couldn't survive as a vegetarian, you know, pain receptors move at something like 300 miles an hour or something like that in the body or something.

52:36

You can you can shoot into the brain with a slug from a shotgun shell and they don't even know it's just over.

52:43

It just lights out there. They don't even feel anything. So, you know, it's just there's ways to do this kind of stuff.

52:50

And but I love my pork. So, you know,

52:55

I get a ribeye and a steak in the fridge right now and making me want to go eat it. It's already dead.

53:00

So it's not suffering or not. You probably already know that people in many religions outside of yours tend to have doctrine that morally justifies actions which seem immoral, but allow that group to better survive or propagate.

53:14

So you are a believer in this tri omni God. Maybe it's time to realize that believers before you likely made up these logically inconsistent ideas within your doctrine.

53:25

It doesn't follow at all. It doesn't logically follow at all. It's right. It's not logically inconsistent.

53:30

Maybe this guy needs a lesson in basic logic. Ah, man, there's I mean, this take a lot longer than I thought.

53:36

There's so many problems. OK, we got to keep going now. Why doesn't God just create people in heaven and skip the trial period of earth?

53:45

Create people in heaven and skip the trial period of earth. This question comes from my friend and fellow atheist

53:50

YouTuber Apologia. So, Paul, I hope that I do this question justice for you. If you haven't checked out his channel, please do it.

53:57

His content is simply excellent through and through. I've been on it. Pretty much every major atheist

54:02

YouTuber that's even active now has been on it. It's great stuff. You won't regret it. Links in the description. OK, so if God is omnipotent, he knows out of all the people he creates, who would choose to believe in him and follow him while on earth.

54:16

He also supposedly doesn't want people to suffer and only wants people to believe in him and follow him.

54:21

However, God allows people who choose him to suffer while on earth. Chapter and chapter.

54:26

There's a couple of things here. Notice that he's using the personal pronouns he.

54:33

So the language he's using is describing a specific God. But he started at the beginning talking about a generic

54:41

God. So which God is he talking about here? Because the answer to that question is going to is going to affect what he is allowed to say about what this

54:51

God desires and what this God doesn't desire. There's nowhere in scripture that the

54:56

Bible says God never desires someone to suffer. We know that because God is also good.

55:02

He has good reasons to permit suffering, whether we know the reasons or not. I mean, he is. Oh, there's a lot of good reasons.

55:07

Seriously, a lot of good reasons. Yeah, self -improvement, discipline, examining yourself.

55:13

You know, when I've suffered a great deal and I've learned a great deal from suffering.

55:20

Wow, I was expecting more out of this. Yeah, it's a good question. It's just the reason the question is good.

55:26

His explanation and justification for thinking the question is good is not good, if that makes sense. No, it's not.

55:33

And much worse. He creates people that he knows will not choose him while on earth. And those people end up suffering in hell.

55:41

There's an inconsistency. There's no inconsistency with that. God can do what he wants. You desire and accomplish what he wants.

55:47

As Romans 9, 9 through 23 clearly says that. And one of the things it says is, who are you to answer back to God?

55:54

The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this? Well, what he's doing is complaining. And a lot of the atheists, they have the right to complain, but they can't justify that their complaint has any universal value or any merit at all.

56:06

What they're basically saying is, I don't like what God does. Well, OK, you don't like what God does. That's different than calling it inconsistent.

56:13

Right. And it's not inconsistent because God has his reasons and we can come up with reasons why suffering, why this and why

56:18

God would create people. And why did this go into heaven? Well, we can go into that and I'll give some answers why.

56:25

But seriously, I was hoping the caliber of the critical thinking was a little bit higher.

56:31

And I'm not saying he's stupid. I'm not saying that. I don't want anybody to take that back and say, I think he's dumb. I think what he's doing here is just giving generic things.

56:39

And when you do generic things, there's a lack of specificity and you can't get into some of the things I think he kind of addressed at the beginning.

56:46

So, you know, give him, you know, give him a little bit of leeway there. But like I said before, and I'll say it again,

56:52

I really would like to see him and other atheists tackle specific Christian issues, very specific, because I'll join them in saying that God over there, that's wrong.

57:02

Have me on your show. We'll tackle why atheism, excuse me, why Islam is false, why Buddhism, why

57:07

Confucianism, all these religious isms just don't work. I'll join you. But when you talk Christian Trinitarianism, now it's a different thing.

57:15

So I think that's what we should be doing. They should be doing. All right. would not have free will and that people in heaven right now don't have free will.

57:51

He hasn't defined his terms. He doesn't know what free will is. He's just assuming a value that's ambiguous, the same as the concept of godness or whatever it is that he's tackling.

58:00

Without defining your terms, you really can't make statements about your terms and they can't be cross -examined. But apparently what he's saying free will is, is some ambiguous thing that people just do, whatever that means.

58:10

Without defining it, I don't see any merit to the argument so far. Does he define his terms later?

58:17

No, but I know a lot of the apologists that he interacts with are classical. They are non -reformed.

58:23

So when he talks about free will, he's probably talking about libertarian, libertarian free will.

58:29

And I would have my criticisms of that. That's a completely different video. Absolutely. You and I both would.

58:35

I think some of the atheist communities need to be more informed on the issues of reformed theology, because in my opinion, we're a little bit more astute in some of these areas related to this topic than the

58:50

Armenians would be. I hope that's not too arrogant to say, but I think that's consistent. And the fact that we might not,

58:56

I mean, okay, so the idea that God should have simply created people in heaven, I think is an interesting and a fair question.

59:02

That's a good question. But I don't see how this leads to atheism, right? Just because we might wonder why

59:08

God chose to create the world the way that he did doesn't imply that God doesn't exist or he most likely doesn't exist, right?

59:16

If we accept the biblical view that God is good, he's all knowing, he's all powerful, then it follows that God has definitely a morally sufficient reason for creating the world in the way that he's created it.

59:28

If you grant those properties, God is all good, then everything he does must be good. He's all knowing.

59:34

So he's not arbitrary. So he's all purposeful. And so it logically follows that God has morally sufficient reasons for making a world in which we have to go through this process.

59:45

We don't have to, as a Christian, we don't have to answer that question with specificity.

59:51

All we need to show is that given the Christian doctrine, God could have perfectly good reasons for why he does what he does.

59:56

And that doesn't entail the high probability of atheism, nor does it warrant anyone for becoming an atheist.

01:00:02

I don't see how that follows at all. You know, it seems that the questions are designed to satisfy one's emotional presuppositions so that they don't have to believe in God.

01:00:12

And this helps me not believe in God because look at that, look how bad he is. And without justifying that it is bad, it's just a complaint.

01:00:21

All right. If a life with free will and suffering is better than one without free will or suffering, then that means that earth must be better than heaven.

01:00:31

So free will can't be the answer to this question. We once again face the problem of evil.

01:00:37

If God couldn't exclusively create people in heaven, he isn't omnipotent. If he didn't know his creation of humans on earth would lead to suffering, he isn't omniscient.

01:00:46

If he could create people in heaven, but won't, he isn't omnibenevolent. As always, though, there -

01:00:52

Or he has a purpose for why he created things the way that he did. It's kind of like the old, you know, if God is all powerful and all loving, if God is all loving, he would desire, or sorry, if God was all good, he would desire to remove all evil.

01:01:11

If God is all powerful, he'd be able to remove all evil. Evil exists, therefore God is either not all good or he's not all evil.

01:01:21

And that, again, basically is kind of the structure of what he's arguing. And the conclusion, therefore, a good

01:01:27

God, an all -good God, and an all -knowing God, or whatever I just said, doesn't exist, doesn't follow.

01:01:33

Because when we think in terms of the validity of an argument, the argument along those lines, and I would say the same thing as what he says, is that it's not valid.

01:01:43

The conclusion doesn't follow. You do have other options. For example, with respect to that argument of God being all good and all powerful,

01:01:50

God will remove evil because he's good, but he removes it in his own time, right?

01:01:56

It's not, therefore, God doesn't exist. It's, therefore, God will remove evil in his own time. Same thing with the example he's using here.

01:02:05

It's the same kind of structure. His conclusion just doesn't follow at all. I agree.

01:02:10

And also, when I talk to atheists who raise these kinds of objections, one of the things I'll do right away is say, can you define your terms?

01:02:17

What does it mean for God to be all good? Right. What standard do you have by which you say what is good?

01:02:22

Go. And they have nothing. So they'll assume a value of goodness that they can't define or justify.

01:02:31

And then they say, this is what God is, all. But then what does that mean? Does he have any other qualities like justice or holiness or patience or kindness or discipline?

01:02:41

Are those excluded by the all good category? Because if he's all of one thing, could he not be any part of another?

01:02:46

Or have these attributes within him? What does that mean? And this is where I find the atheists routinely just don't have any answers.

01:02:52

Because in my opinion, my experience with them, I've been doing this for 20 years with atheists now, they don't think these things through.

01:03:00

They don't understand the Christian perspective. They don't define their terms. But I always tell people, define your terms, first thing, know what you're talking about.

01:03:07

Then use your terms in statements. And then we debate, teach, go cross examine whether or not those statements have validity.

01:03:14

But if you cannot define your terms, you just assume their value and you go on, particularly in questions like this, where free will becomes an issue that you have to discuss and have an issue with trying to solve problems that some

01:03:27

Christians do. And a lot of Christians don't know this stuff too. A lot of Christians, just to be fair, don't know how to define these terms or what these terms mean.

01:03:34

We have to do this with them all the time. But it's just a necessary thing to do. I think that needs to be done. But to be fair, he's not seeking to do all this.

01:03:42

He's just doing a 20 ,000 foot view of all this stuff. So trying to be fair and get it.

01:03:48

But there's so much here to talk about. And I think it's easy for him to argue this way if you're starting from a generic

01:03:56

God. If you're starting from a generic and ambiguous God, there's enough ambiguity where you can make assertions about the

01:04:02

God and draw all sorts of conclusions. But once you add specificity to the God, it doesn't work with the

01:04:07

Christian God. It doesn't even work with the Muslim God. Once you get specific with the Muslim, the Muslim could easily be like, well, we don't believe that about God.

01:04:14

A lot doesn't act that way. But when you're throwing rocks from far away, talking about an ambiguous deity, then it becomes easy to make these kind of sweeping statements of what

01:04:24

God would or wouldn't want. Especially what you're throwing rocks at is something you've constructed. Right. It's a giant straw man.

01:04:32

I was thinking more about rock man. You can do that as well. Well, you don't want to do rock man because then it empties the analogy because it's hard to knock down.

01:04:40

Unless you have bigger rocks. That's right. Yeah, I got myself in a hole. Okay, let's go going. Maybe this idea of God is simply nonsensical.

01:04:50

The truth is the concept of a tri -omni -God falls apart immediately under anything more than momentary consideration.

01:04:57

To me, it seems that there's a notion out there that this kind of God is the most obvious or most likely the default idea of God.

01:05:05

The only reason this absurd idea of deity is so prevalent today— What is the default view of God, I wonder?

01:05:12

Can you answer that question without having your worldview dictate your answer?

01:05:21

You see, from a Christian perspective, the tri -omni -God who reveals himself both in nature and scripture is the default God. For him, the default

01:05:27

God is just some generic idea that most people might agree on with respect to what they think God ought to be.

01:05:34

Just a construction of his own imagination. Right. It's because of the often genocidal physical and cultural conquest of Abrahamic faiths, especially in the

01:05:45

West. Okay. Just because it's perhaps the most— One of the things I've done with atheists is they'll say God is genocidal.

01:05:51

I actually do this with them. I'll say, is that wrong? Is it bad?

01:05:57

Is it wrong? Tell me why it's wrong. Why? Tell me why it's wrong for God to not be able to kill all kinds of people if he so desires.

01:06:06

He kills innocent people, Matt. That's what they say. He's in all those innocent people in the flood. That's why you're all innocent.

01:06:13

Yeah, we'll get into that. Yeah. But I ask them these questions. You just assume values. They beg the question so much and they can't justify the assumptions that they're begging.

01:06:23

Just weak. Most prevalent idea of God where you are.

01:06:29

Don't think it's the hardest to counter. After all, how powerful is a God really when their nature falls apart at the sound of a few simple questions?

01:06:38

Okay, I usually just pin a question in my comments, but I really wanted to ask on camera this time. Can I need to say this here?

01:06:45

If you think of a question in your mind. And you think that this automatically unravels a concept that has been thought about by perhaps the most brilliant minds in history, you probably need to stop and think a little harder.

01:07:02

These people come up with this stuff as though Christians have never heard this before, right? It's kind of like, who created

01:07:09

God? And you're just kind of standing there like, oh, wow. Yeah, who created

01:07:15

God? You say it with a British accent, like Richard Dawkins, and then it sounds profound. It's like, well, we see that things that are complex require design, but who designed the designer?

01:07:26

And everyone's just like, all the atheists are like, yeah. You know, Christians are just like, what?

01:07:33

That's easy to deal with too. But not when someone with a British accent says it, because then you can't answer that.

01:07:38

If I could speak in a British accent, I could speak in a moron accent. You wouldn't be able to answer. Who created the designer,

01:07:45

Mr. Slick? How would you? No one. Oh, how convenient.

01:07:51

Special pleading. Yes, it is. It's very convenient. In fact, when you assume that convenience, everything makes sense after that.

01:07:57

Let's get rid of the nature of such a creator. Oh, man. All right, here we go. Questions have you come up with that reveal holes in God's supposed nature?

01:08:06

It doesn't have to be exclusively about the Abrahamic concept of a God. I'm really interested to hear what you guys have come up with, because if you can't tell, this is a very intriguing topic for me personally.

01:08:16

Thanks for commenting. Thanks for watching. I've been Drew of Genetically Modified Skeptic. As always, go ahead and subscribe.

01:08:22

Check out my Patreon. Follow me on Twitter and Facebook at GM Skeptic. Join my Discord. Until next time, stay skeptical.

01:08:29

And you should stay skeptical, especially you should be skeptical of everything he just said in this video, because it's really bad.

01:08:36

I want to be skeptical of his skepticism. Yeah, no, yeah. I was asking.

01:08:42

Probably not. Yeah, probably not. You know, he seemed like a truly nice guy.

01:08:49

And he's probably someone we could have a good conversation with, a respectful one. And that would be a good conversation to have with him about things.

01:08:57

But you and I both see a lot of problems with this. I think the reason is because he's not specific.

01:09:04

He's not specific. And when I write articles and I do things, I try and be as specific as I can.

01:09:10

And I've noticed that when I do that, sometimes a lot of people don't understand the specificity dealing with theological and logical options and teachings.

01:09:19

And that they'll come around the orbit, and they haven't quite understood a couple of things. It could be I'm not a good communicator sometimes.

01:09:25

That certainly can happen. But I wish that the atheists, and I'll give him benefit of the doubt. He's just doing a mile high thing and just kind of generically going.

01:09:33

I'd like to see him try and tackle the Christian Trinitarian God, who's not omnibenevolent. The Bible never says he's omnibenevolent.

01:09:40

It says he knows all things. He's all powerful. He can do whatever he desires. He's a sovereign king. But he's also holy.

01:09:47

He also hates. Psalm 5, he also hates. That's right. Psalm 5, 5, 11, 5. And Romans 9.

01:09:53

He's also the sovereign king who does. And then we have to deal with the issue of the external and internal critiques. Because they often,

01:09:58

I call it taxi cab theology, or taxi cab apologetics. They're driving along the road, and they get out of the cab when it's inconvenient for them.

01:10:08

The internal examination of Christian thought is consistent. Consistent, so let's get outside, do an external critique.

01:10:14

That's why it's a problem. They get back in. They say, see, now deal with the problem. And what I'd like to do is call them on that.

01:10:20

Say, no, no, no, no, no. If you're going to stay with an internal critique instead of an external critique, then you better know what it is you're talking about.

01:10:26

Now, it's certainly possible. Some could think they know, and they don't know enough. And we can correct them and help them. Just as I am corrected by certain people and diverting groups

01:10:34

I disagree with. And I receive that. I receive that wholeheartedly. I do. And I want to be corrected.

01:10:40

I absolutely do. I've had people come to my website and say, you misrepresented us this way. And then they'll show me the article.

01:10:46

They'll show me something, a documentation. I've corrected it. And maybe it's not your fault.

01:10:51

Maybe it's their fault for using words to communicate. I mean, it's right.

01:10:57

I mean, it's just the problem is you can't use words because words can be misinterpreted.

01:11:02

I mean, isn't that the argument? That's right. That's why we define words. Definitions are so important. I teach people only to find words.

01:11:08

You could only define words with more words. Yeah, you have to use presupposed words in order to define words, ask questions about defining words and ask questions about how you can understand things.

01:11:18

So the presuppositions are there all over the place. I think it's interesting that most atheists don't realize how presuppositional they are.

01:11:25

They assume so many values just off the cuff. It'd be interesting to go back through and just listen without, you know, just not takes too long to stop.

01:11:33

Let's go presupposition. Here's one he made. Here's one. Here's one. Here's one. See how many are made. Because is he actually working logically or presuppositionally?

01:11:41

And if he's working logically, well, we've already poked holes in a lot of that. If he's operating presuppositionally, then great.

01:11:48

Give us your worldview, your specific worldview. Let's find out what worldview you have. Are you materialist, a supernaturalist, a continuationist?

01:11:56

Do you believe in the issue of life after death, a property dualist, a subsist dualist? Are you a nominalist?

01:12:02

Are you a realist? What kind of epistemic belief system do you have? Now, once you've got it framed out, now let's talk about your worldview and how it works within that framework.

01:12:11

That's what I like to do with them. A lot of times when I'm talking to atheists, what they want me to do is talk about all kinds of philosophical things within atheism.

01:12:20

And I tell them, look, I can't know every single subdivision of every philosophical aspect that an atheist might come up with.

01:12:26

I ask, what's your position? Let me discuss things with you and your position. Why do you want to talk about my position?

01:12:31

You're the one making the positive claim, Matt, right? How, why, why do you need, why do you need to prove your view by having me talk about my view?

01:12:39

You ever hear that one? Yeah. Yeah. Because you're making assumptions too. If you only ask questions. I don't have any presuppositions.

01:12:46

I don't have any presuppositions. Yeah, you presuppose. And you can take that to the bank. You remember that Aaron Ross? You can take that to the bank.

01:12:53

Yeah, boy, he doesn't, he still doesn't like me. No, my favorite, my favorite. Ready? You said

01:12:58

God is transcendent. Oh, but what is he transcending? I don't know if you remember that one.

01:13:06

What is he transcending? What an open door. You know, you know me,

01:13:11

I got a good sense of humor. And sometimes it can be misunderstood, particularly in contexts like that. What's he transcending?

01:13:17

Man, oh man, if I was doing stand up, I'd say, let me tell you what he's transcending. We'll start with you right up here and we'll go to town.

01:13:25

But yeah. Okay. Well, anyway, hey, this is fun. You do some more of these.

01:13:30

I wonder if there's going to be an interaction. I'm going to release this soon and very soon. And we'll get this going and see if we can get some people to respond with it.

01:13:37

And then we'll see if about any follow -ups and some other stuff. Hey, tell them how to get ahold of you again.

01:13:44

Oh, well, folks can go to my YouTube channel, Revealed Apologetics, and they can email me at revealedapologetics at gmail .com.

01:13:52

And they can reach me at my website as well at revealedapologetics .com. There you go. And I'm the founder director of karm .org,

01:13:59

the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. Been around since 1995 and written a lot of stuff on there.

01:14:06

I'm old. I'm 67, 67. I can't believe it. Even if you look hard, Matt can be found in the book of Genesis right there.

01:14:15

When God said, let there be light, Matt was the one that pulled the switch. He's like, yes, Lord. That's right.

01:14:21

I got to find some way to get slick in there somehow. And it's my real name, folks. A lot of people don't know, but it's my real name.

01:14:27

It's not a pseudonym. Hey, brother, God bless. Thanks. I know you got to get back to your family. You got stuff to do and really appreciate you.

01:14:35

May the Lord bless you. And we'll talk to you later. So God bless everybody. I hope you enjoyed this.