Engaging Atheism with Sye Ten Bruggencate

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Join us for this exciting episode of Apologia Radio! We are joined live-in-studio by our good friend, Sye Ten Bruggencate. We talk about the Biblical approach to Christian Apologetics and we do a bit of a throw-back by playing a radio debate we had with a well-known local Atheist. Don't miss this. Let the world know. You can get more at http://apologiastudios.com. Be sure to like, share, and comment on this video. #ApologiaStudios You can partner with us by signing up for All Access. When you do you make everything we do possible and you also get our TV show, After Show, and Apologia Academy. In our Academy you can take a course on Christian apologetics and learn how to witness to Mormons. Follow us on social media here: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ApologiaStudios/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/apologiastudios?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/apologiastudios/?hl=en William lane craig Gordon Stein Greg bahnsen jeff Durbin

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I would say if the authorities didn't want us involved in the public square, they ought not to have crucified
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Jesus in the public square. Use humanistic principles. Well, I would say the same idea. I would say that. Same answer.
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I would say what's the problem with stardust bumping into stardust? In the cosmic picture, none.
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There's no problem. Oh, right. In the cosmic picture, it won't matter. No, Mr.
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President, you are not protecting reproductive freedom. You are authorizing the destruction of freedom for one million little human beings every year.
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I'm sorry, my friends, but I am tired of seeing Jesus presented as a weak beggar.
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He is a powerful savior, and the gospel is not a suggestion, it is a command.
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Reverend Haller, don't you sympathize with that? I sympathize with every single human heart wishing to know the one true and living
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God, but I believe there's only one way that that can happen through Jesus Christ, and the gospel is about repenting of sin, not celebrating it.
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An amazing adventure.
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We will explore the spiritual abyss. You have not experienced this before.
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All right, guys. Welcome to Apologia Radio. I'm Jeff the Calm of the
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Ninja. You can get more at ApologiaStudios .com. That's Luke the Bear. Is that me exploding?
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What's going on over there? Hi. And over here, we have Live in Studio. Very excited about this.
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One of my very, very good friends. Man, I love, love dearly. This is Saiten Bruggenkate. Hey. You guys know him, of course, from Apologia Radio, because he's been on a kajillion times.
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And, of course, we've done a public debate together. We've talked to atheists. We've talked to Dan Barker together, president of the
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Freedom from Religion. Who knows? Is that what it's called? Yeah, I think so. Freedom from Religion Foundation. We had one of the local atheists here at ASU on the radio program.
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We've done lots of things together. You may know, Sai, from the wonderful, wonderful film, How to Answer the
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Fool. Great film. If you haven't seen it yet, it's actually available now. It is free on YouTube.
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Oh, by the way, put your mic. Kiss the mic. It's available at the Dutch price. At the Dutch price. And I can say that because I am
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Dutch. That's right. My heritage is Dutch. That's right. So let's make sure everyone, for everyone who's just getting familiar with you, we've got actually a lot of new subscribers on our
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YouTube channel. Where can they go to get your content? Proofthatgodexists .org
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But the film is available on my YouTube. I made a new YouTube channel. It's called Answer Anyone. But if they just Google How to Answer the
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Fool on YouTube, they should be able to find it. It says Full Film or something like that. Okay, so if you haven't seen it yet,
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I encourage you to do it. Just a couple of years ago, you'd have to purchase the film itself to be able to get it.
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It was worth every penny. But I encourage you to go and check the film out. It is eye -opening and very, very instructive.
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It's done very, very well. Who worked on that? It was obviously Sy, but it was David? David Shannon of the
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Chalk and Locks. He was the director. But you know the director of photography quite dearly. That's right. Because actually, the director of photography spawned a lot of what's happening here.
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That was Marcus Pittman. That's right. And I love seeing Carmen and Daniel in the studio. But man, I miss him here.
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I know. It was great to see him again these last couple of days I've been down here. Yeah, he's still around. He's still at Apologia.
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Marcus had a lot to do, and so did Ivy Connerly. That's right. Ivy Connerly, the rapper, he did his first sound work on the film.
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And it was great, because sometimes the conversation… Sorry. Sometimes the conversation would get a little bit heated, and his street background came out.
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And there's a couple of times he'd jump between me and my interlocutor to defend me. And it was pretty cool.
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He was loving it. Sometimes he said he was ignoring his work because he was thinking about the conversation that he'd never heard before.
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And he does street witnessing, and he just loved it. Real talk. I've been transcribing the film for different languages, and the sound quality was fantastic.
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Ivy did a great job. Ivy's the best. He is the best. He's the sound beast. So, let's see here.
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Check out How to Answer the Fool. It's a great thing to do in a group
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Bible study setting, group fellowship setting, just sit down together and watch it. When it first came out,
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I remember that I actually sat down and watched it with Sage, my son, Sage, and my daughter, Imogen. And Sage has grown up in my house, and he's seen all the debates.
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He's been with us out on the streets. And that was, I think, one of the first times, I think, for my son, Sage, where it really clicked.
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I think he was maybe 13 or 14 years old, maybe. And I remember midway through, he was like, oh.
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He was like, oh, there it is. Well, people say how difficult this apologetic is, but I remember Jeff Rose telling me he was watching with his six -year -old daughter.
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And it was more at the end of the debate when I'm with that Dr. Jones fellow. And this six -year -old said, he's not answering
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Sai's questions. Yeah. You know, they get it. Yes. You know, the world and Christians in this world beat presuppositionalism out of their children, without hitting them, of course, because that would be politically incorrect.
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I miss Jeff. Jeff Rose. I love Jeff Rose. I miss him. Okay. So, hey, let's get right into the show today.
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Let's make sure this is a blessing for everybody. Sai, we're talking a ton about apologetics. We're talking about a biblical apologetic.
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We're talking about, like, this approach of apologetics. But for a lot of people listening to this right now, a lot of believers, they might be thinking, like, what do you mean?
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I thought there's just Christian apologetics. I thought we just defend the faith. So what do you mean this approach?
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And how come people are going, aha, I get it. Why? Because when you speak of apologetics this way, it's happened to me.
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People at conferences, tears in their eyes coming up to me. That's the God that I believe in. Okay. Why? Because we're not apologizing for God anymore.
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We're talking about the God of the Bible. In the Bible, it says that everyone knows that God exists, and it classifies those who reject
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His existence as fools. But the problem is, and as I say in the film as well, if somebody came up to you and says,
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I don't believe in words, we wouldn't pull out a dictionary and show them words. We wouldn't pull out one of those children's alphabets and, you know, try and form it and say, you really do believe in words.
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We'd think they were crazy. But who made words? God made words. And somebody says, I don't believe in God, and we treat them as though they didn't just say,
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I don't believe in words. And one of the analogies that I give, you know, God in His words says everyone knows that He exists.
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Right. Now, let's say that you were talking to somebody about your wife, and they said, you know, I think your wife's a prostitute.
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You say, well, you know, actually, last night she was cooking dinner for me, so I don't think she was out in the street. And the night before that, she was at choir practice, so I don't think she was out in the street.
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And the night before that, she was at her parents' place, so I don't think she was. Would you say that? No. You'd say, pal. That's my wife you're talking about.
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Right. You better be very careful with the next words out of your mouth. Right. Somebody comes up to you and says, I don't believe in God, they just call
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God a liar. Right. They just blaspheme God, and we treat them differently than we would treat our wife.
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We would uphold the dignity of our wives, but we don't do it for God. Do you, Cy, do you, this is,
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I think it'd be good for us to talk about this. There is so much connected to presuppositional apologetics that is, in reality, connected to a network of other presuppositions and assumptions, a network of them.
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For example, God's Word is true. Right. It's the standard, Sola Scriptura, it's the sole infallible rule of faith and practice.
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And so with Sola Scriptura, we get a particular view about mankind. Right. Their condition before God.
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The person who's standing in front of me is not spiritually sick. The Reformed view of, the
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Reformed anthropology view of mankind is that the person in front of me right now is spiritually dead in their sins and trespasses, by nature a child of wrath, they are hostile towards their
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Creator, they're an enemy of God, they are fallen, they are a rebel, they are wicked. I'm quoting Scripture, by the way, in case, you know, you're thinking
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I'm being abusive here. That's what the Bible says about our condition. So, this translates in terms of the
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Reformed presuppositional apologist has God as the principium, as the center of it all, as the reference point.
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And so when I walk into the conversation with the unbeliever, I see this person through the lens that God tells me to see them through.
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A person who's lost, who is hostile, who is suppressing the truth about him. And therefore,
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I have my apologetic methodology working through that story.
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This person knows the God that I'm talking about is suppressing the truth. The problem isn't a lack of lighter evidence, it's their sin against God.
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Right? Right. And the thing is, the more that you argue apologetically, you'll see the folly that people resort to in order to defend their worldview.
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I think specifically of my conversation with Paul Baird. Okay. And at one point I said to him, is it impossible for God to exist?
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And he says, no, that's not impossible. I said, is it impossible for the Bible to be what it claims to be? And he said, yes.
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I said, why? He said, there's so many competing books, you know, from different religions.
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We'd never know which is the right one. And I said, Paul, would it make sense to say that there is no real money because there's counterfeit money?
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And he goes, ooh, that's a very interesting question. I said, Paul, would it make sense to say that there's no real dollar bills because there's fake ones?
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And this went on for like a couple of minutes. Then finally he says, yes. Wow. Now people think that because we're doing a biblical apologetic, therefore, they're going to drop on their knees and follow us into church.
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No, but we're going to expose their folly. Because people say, when will they understand this apologetic?
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They'll understand this apologetic when God saves them. Same with any apologetic. When God saves them.
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But now at least we're honoring Him when we do it. Great. Now let's talk about that specifically in terms of, because this is probably what you and I are most passionate about.
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It's about honoring our Lord, honoring His word, honoring His truth. And so when we talk about this apologetic, we're talking about in terms of honoring
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God, right? So when we talk about this apologetic that honors God, we're talking about it in terms of what
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God says about Himself, His world, us, His word. And so like, for example, I have it pulled up right here,
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Colossians 2. It's one of our favorites. It talks about Jesus, and it says, and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is
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Christ, in whom Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
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And then Paul goes on to say here, in the context of a lot of Greek philosophical debate that was happening, these people are not schlubs in the first century.
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They were doing this for a living. They were thinking and working through. You've got Socrates, Aristotle, you've got the
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Epicureans, all the people who were having their debates. They were working through some very high -level, sophisticated worldview thinking.
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And Paul is saying this in the context of the same guy who was at the
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Areopagus challenging the idols of the unbelievers and pointing out that they know the
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God that he's talking about. They even built a shrine to him. And so he says this, in whom are all hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
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I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. And then he goes on to say in verse 6 of chapter 2 of Colossians, Therefore, as you receive
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Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, and establish in the faith, just as you were taught at bounding and thanksgiving.
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See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to the human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
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So there is a philosophy according to the inspired apostle that is not according to Christ. And the inverse is there is a philosophy that is according to Christ.
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So let's talk about that for a second. And honoring Christ as Lord and Him being the foundation and fountain of knowledge and wisdom and truth and all those things.
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Like we want to honor God. Right. So basically all these things belong to Jesus Christ. Knowledge, logic, morality.
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All these things belong to Him. And what we do is we give them to the unbeliever in order to argue against Jesus Christ.
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And the analogy that I've come up with, it's like two countries that are going to have a war. But you happen to have all of the ammunition.
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I say, when does that war start? That war starts when you give your opponent some ammunition. I love that analogy.
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And I refuse to do that because Jesus Christ is my Lord and He is the foundation of all that Romans 11, 36, from Him, through Him, and to Him are all things.
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Jesus Christ owns logic. He owns science. He owns morality. I'm not going to give that to the person
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I'm talking with in order to argue against God. Very good. So what we're telling other brothers and sisters in Christ and people who are thinking these deep philosophical thoughts is that knowledge has a foundation.
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Knowledge has a starting point. Knowledge has a place that you fix yourself. And if you don't fix yourself there, knowledge isn't actually possible.
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You can have what's so -called knowledge. You can have borrowed capital from the Christian worldview to make knowledge claims and use logic.
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But what we're saying is that the Bible, I mean, Si already said it. He said, the Bible says those who reject God are fools.
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That's what the Bible says. And we treat the person who rejects God. But it's not an insult. No, no. It's a moral indictment.
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Right. It's not even their intellect. We engage people that are way smarter than us. But they're made to look like fools like that Paul Baird in that clip there.
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He's probably way smarter than I am. But when you reject God, your folly is exposed. Right. One thing
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I loved about the debate between Dr. R .C. Sproul and Dr. Bonson, it was a classical approach versus presuppositional, was when they talked about this part of the unbeliever being a fool.
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I like what Sproul said. He says, When we say that you're a fool for rejecting
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God, it's not like fool being set in the place of sin. It's hostile rebellion.
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You're a fool. It's a moral indictment. And so what we're saying is, is that when you don't start with the
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God of the Bible, when you don't start with him as the center point, as the reference, for all questions, all knowledge, all claims to truth, then you're reduced to absurdity and foolishness.
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And you mentioned a couple of things, Cy. We do it often. You mentioned logic. You mentioned science. Morality. Morality.
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How, though? Because there's a lot of people who are new to this whole thing. So how? Now, what you'll see is the longer that I do this, the less
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I get into the philosophy, because I don't want to be like the evidentialists who had to learn all these evidences. But in order to explain it, to see what we're talking about, let's take, for example, logic.
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You know, somebody says to me, I could never be a Christian. There's too many logical contradictions in the Bible. I say, you know, I don't believe there are any.
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There might be things that I have difficulty reconciling. That's what we do in Bible studies. Right. But why do you have a problem with logical contradictions?
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First, I say, well, bring one up. And if I don't know it, I'll try and tell you. I'll be gracious how we reconcile that. But you have a problem with logical contradictions.
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So do I. Logical contradictions are not allowed to a Christian because God says, do not lie. There you go.
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Your car cannot be both in the parking lot and not in the parking lot at the same time in the same way. God says, do not lie. Logical contradictions are lies.
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But why can't you have logical contradictions? Yes. And they say, well, logic contradictions violate the laws of logic.
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Great. You believe in logic. Logic is universal. It's not made of matter. It does not change. God is universal.
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He's not made of matter. He does not change. We don't say God is logic. But God is logical. And we have a worldview that makes sense of logic.
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But you want to use that from a materialistic point where things are constantly changing. You want to borrow logic from God to argue against God.
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Look, I'll tell you how we can reconcile it. But that's not going to satisfy you. Your problem is not intellectual. It's spiritual.
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That's right. That's right. Sorry, I got an example we had recently.
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Hey, brother. It's good seeing you guys. Man, I miss you guys. I know. We miss you. We miss you. It kind of ties in everything you're saying here and kind of maybe demonstrate the difference between, you know, we're talking about presuppositional, maybe evidential or classical apologetics.
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So, we had somebody recently message us and they literally start off the message by saying, my girlfriend bet me $100 that Jeff can convince me to believe in God.
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I'll give you $1 ,000 if you convince me. And I just said, I can't convince you. So, I'm not even going to try, but I'm going to show you the folly of your worldview, you know.
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So, I went on to then show him. Every time he would make a logical claim or a morality claim, you know, show him that he has no ground to stand on.
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And this is why I love presuppositional apologetics because then, at that point, it's immediately, you know
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God, you're suppressing that, repent, and I'm going to keep showing you how you know God. You know, but a classical or evidentialist might then go on to try to give examples.
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I might try to spend hours on end trying to convince them. It's like, no, you already know. You're just suppressing that.
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Here's the question. This is what I tell people. Let's say you are versed in these evidences, and evidences are a gift from God, but we don't want to elevate the person's position of judge.
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But let's say you have a conversation with that person for six hours about the complexity of the eye, about rock layers, about paper fragments, and they have a tragedy in their life the next day.
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And they are of the elect, and God's going to say to them, who are they coming to? Exactly. Are they coming to the person who talked with them about the complexity of the eye for six hours?
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The person says, you know that God exists. If you die tonight, you're going to die unrepentant without Jesus Christ, and I love you enough to tell you that.
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Who are they coming to? They're not coming to the person who knows all this philosophy. And if you have to argue that way, you have to be brilliant.
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But Jesus said, I will give you words and wisdom that your adversaries will not be able to resist or contradict. He didn't say
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Jeff would. He didn't say Luke would. He didn't say Si would. He said, I would. In John chapter 10, Jesus did not say, my sheep hear
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Si's really good argument. He said, my sheep hear my voice. It is really good, by the way.
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They watch a William Lane Craig debate, and he's reviewed a debate that I did, and Dr.
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White ended up reviewing that. But they watch one of the William Lane Craig debates, and they say, you know, I could never do that. That guy's brilliant.
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And that's what evidential apologetics does. I'm not saying they're doing it willingly, but it glorifies the apologist.
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They watch one of my debates, and they say, I could do that. That guy's an idiot. You know, and sometimes they might say, he didn't come to debate.
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He just came to preach. And I say, amen. That's one of the best insult -plements, or complisults.
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We'll call it a complisult. One of the best complisults I can get. That's awesome. So I want people to hear us very clearly, because we are the body of Christ, and so this is an in -house discussion over methodology.
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Understand that if you hold to a more classical approach, or evidentialist approach, this is not a war we're making with you.
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It's a matter of, let's sharpen ourselves, let's sharpen our positions, and let's get to the
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Word of God and ask the question, what's the most consistent, biblically and philosophically?
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And of course, that stands on whether it's biblical. So that's the thing. So what we're saying is that it's a problem if we have an apologetic methodology that leads us to a general deity.
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And if you might challenge what I'm saying right now and say, Jeff, I reject that. I don't think any Christian apologist is leading you to a general deity.
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I would say that you need to spend some time listening to Dr. William Lane Craig. Well, Jeff, are you certain that God exists?
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Yes. No! Oh, yeah, there you go. That's right. I should pull that clip up. And we could probably get to that in a few minutes here.
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But, yeah, you have plenty of examples of Christian apologists who want to sort of pretend neutrality for the moment of the debate.
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They don't do it in church. I don't believe the classical apologists are pretending neutrality when they're before the throne of God with the people of God worshiping and singing to God.
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There, they're certain. There, they know the God that they're standing on. They know the God they're professing, and they know the
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God that they're hanging on to, all of His promises. It's all absolutely true. You're mad to deny it.
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But when they get before the atheist, they go, oh, well, he denies God exists. Well, okay, let me pretend neutrality, and let's see where this evidence takes us.
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And you get examples of even these methodologies working out to where they actually say in public debate,
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I'm not defending the God of the Bible right now. I'm just defending the same general form of deity we get with Judaism or Islam or Christianity.
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You should be happy. I'm not asking you to worship the God of the Bible or become a Christian. I'm just telling you that there's a general deity out there.
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If you think that I'm telling tales out of the schoolyard, you just need to do some homework.
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And I mean that very, very humbly to you. It's a problem. And Si talked at the beginning, and I talked at the beginning about this is about honoring
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God, honoring Christ as Lord. Because see, it comes down to this. Let me ask you this. Do you believe this?
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Do you believe this? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
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Now, start thinking like a Christian now. That's the words of God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
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Do we believe it? If you say, absolutely, it's God's word. Well, then fantastic.
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You've just granted the entire position of presuppositional apologetics, that it is reverent submission in all fear before God that is the beginning, the beginning of knowledge.
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That's where it starts. Now, of course, you might say, well, that's just one verse, Jeff. We can go for days here about this, what the
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Bible says about God being the source. How about what we just read in Colossians 2, that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
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You want wisdom? You want knowledge? It's all bundled up in Jesus. And so what we're saying is that we have to start our apologetic methodology standing on the revelation of God and working our way from there.
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And you know what the glorious thing that I think is so beautiful, Si, about this is that when I start with the
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God of the Bible, when I presuppose his revelation, he's my reference point,
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I get logic. I get science in a coherent way. I get meaningful appeals to morality, ethical appeals.
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I get all of it. I look over at the atheist who says that his ancestors were, you know, fish, and he says he's in an indifferent cosmos just bobbing along the surface.
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He's just stardust. He's meaningless, indifference, and no good and no evil. I look at his position where he starts without God and I say,
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I don't want to start there. I don't even want to pretend to start there. Unless, of course,
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I'm going to step into his position to show him the folly of it. Right. Now, we've got to be clear.
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We're not saying that people have not been genuinely converted with these arguments or with evidences.
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God can use a bent stick to strike a straight blow. But here is my question for these people who adhere to these apologetic methodologies.
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Which argument or evidence could make you no longer a Christian? And if they haven't answered that question,
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I've heard people say, well, if they found the bones of Jesus, I wouldn't be a Christian anymore. If they did this, I wouldn't be a Christian anymore. I say, well, who's the
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Lord of your reasoning? You've never fully submitted. Somebody says, what would make you no longer a Christian? I said, nothing can make me no longer a
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Christian because as a Christian, I realize that Jesus is the foundation of my reasoning. Yeah. Those who left us were never among us.
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Here's my question. How does a person who has God as their authority reason out of the position that God is the authority of their reasoning?
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Right. It's impossible. And that's, of course, reflected in Scripture. Right. You know, that doesn't make Scripture true. Scripture is true and everything outside of it will reflect that.
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Right. You cannot reason out of the position that God is the authority. So when people say, I went to school and I saw, you know, and college and I saw all these different things and therefore
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I'm no longer a Christian. As a Christian, if there's things that don't make sense to us, and let's face it, there's things in the Bible that we don't understand.
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What do we do as Christians? Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. Lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight.
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That's right. But what do we do? We try and repair that evidence to bring them back to a place where they're the judge over the evidence.
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And Christians don't think that way. Christians know this, but other
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Christians in universities are teaching them something different. Because here's the thing. We send missionaries to people in the deepest, darkest jungles of Africa.
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Why do we do that? If these people really don't know that God exists, we'd be removing their excuse. Sending missionaries would be wicked.
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But we send missionaries because they have sufficient knowledge of God for their condemnation. And we send missionaries to tell them about Jesus Christ, their only way out of the hell that each and every one of us deserve.
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All Christians know this. Otherwise, witnessing or praying for your family would be wicked. Because we'd be removing their excuse.
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Yeah, and what we're not saying with this apologetic is that you don't use reason and evidence and logic.
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What we're saying is that you don't pretend neutrality as you do it. Right. And you don't step into the unbeliever's position.
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That sounds familiar. Something about a fence, you know, like he's for us. Yeah. He's not for us.
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He's against us. That's right. That's right. So what we're saying, just fundamentally, just take a single landing zone.
24:54
You hear us say it a lot in Romans 1. That is so descriptive of the position that we hold and our condition as fallen human beings.
25:02
It says in Romans 1, it says, The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness are suppressing the truth.
25:14
And it says, That which is known about God— Listen closely, please, to this. Very humbly, I want to suggest this to you.
25:20
That which is known about God is evident within them for God has shown it to them.
25:28
God has made it evident to them. Now, when you look at a text like that, you think, wow, that's a pretty serious indictment upon humans.
25:39
That they know this God. He's made himself evident to them. He's shown himself to them.
25:45
He's put the knowledge of himself into them. And it says that they are actively suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.
25:51
And then it says that they exchange the glory of the immortal God for an image and they worship and serve the creature rather than the creator.
25:57
And it says they don't want to know God. It says they don't want God in their knowledge.
26:03
They don't want to know him. That's the condition of fallen humanity. So they know the true
26:09
God, suppress the truth, they switch them, they worship the creature, and it says that they profess to be wise and they become fools.
26:17
They don't want God in their knowledge. That's the description of mankind according to Scripture.
26:23
Now, question. When you see an approach of apologetic methodology that actually assumes the opposite about the unbeliever, that they just don't know, they just don't have enough evidence, that they're not suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, that maybe they really do want
26:39
God in their knowledge, then you're literally going the inverse direction. That's literally the opposite perspective that Scripture takes of the person in front of you.
26:46
So what's the goal? The aim is in the same text, Romans chapter 1. The gospel is the power of God for salvation.
26:54
And what's the gospel? Well, it's the message that if you pray this prayer, you go to heaven one day. Nope. Nope. Do you go to heaven one day when you trust in Jesus Christ?
27:03
Absolutely, forever and ever, as a gift, apart from any work, ever. It's all His righteousness and His work alone.
27:09
But no, see, inside the gospel call is some truths, like Jesus is
27:15
God, like Jesus is Lord of everything, like Jesus is sitting on His throne, and He's ruling and making all enemies under His feet.
27:24
And the gospel is the call to repent of your sin and come and submit to Christ as Savior and Lord.
27:31
You see, that's a very different perspective in terms of apologetic methodology. And I would highly encourage, and I'll let
27:36
Simon finish the thought here, if you really want to get a grasp on this, I would say you need to do this.
27:41
Go and check out a debate, best debate in history, as far as I'm concerned, between a Christian and an atheist.
27:47
It's Dr. Greg Bonson versus Gordon Stein, 1980s. Gordon Stein was a famous atheist, and he was not ready.
27:55
He was not ready for Dr. Bonson. And it's about two and a half hours long or so, and it is...
28:01
That's because Bonson's always ready. He's always ready. That's his book, by the way. So I encourage you to go listen to Dr.
28:07
Gordon Stein, Dr. Greg Bonson. Listen to it 20 times. Seriously. I still get stuff out of it.
28:14
Oh, yeah. Listen to it 20 times. Go ahead. No, we're saying, because one, the show is going to be, it's like the five -year anniversary and a few months since our debate with Andre.
28:24
And what I said, I likened a lot of the response of Andre is that he was also not prepared for this argumentation.
28:30
And it was like with Dr. Stein and Dr. Bonson. When we first listened to it, we didn't know what happened because we'd never heard anything like that before.
28:39
But we knew it was something different. And like I say, I probably listened to it 100 times, and I still get stuff out of it.
28:45
Dr. Bonson, I mean, he died at the age of 47 from heart ailments, but he was the most brilliant man
28:51
I've ever heard speak. And the interesting thing in the debate with Dr. Stein, he knew Dr. Stein's position better than he did.
28:58
So when he wasn't getting a sufficient refutation of his view, he would help Dr. Stein explain what he was trying to say.
29:04
Yeah, I'd really encourage people to check that out. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm thankful for what
29:10
Apologia does as well because when we started off at this, like I said, you could not find presuppositionalism.
29:19
I can't even say it. You can't even say the apologetic methodologies. But I found Gene Cook's podcast out in California.
29:26
Now you can't swing a dead cat without hitting it. And I think that this has a lot to do with that. And I told you the story
29:31
I shared with you recently, but there's Klaus Klau, and he's a missionary that attends the church that I'm going to now.
29:36
And I gave him a copy of How to Answer the Fool, and he'd never heard of me, which I expect. But he handed it to his son Otto, and Otto looked at the name, and he says, this sounds familiar.
29:45
They were missionaries in Ghana a few months before that. And he says, there's a missionary out there, from Brazil in Ghana.
29:52
And what's he watching? Apologia. Praise God. And he found How to Answer the Fool. And he told me beautiful witnessing encounters that he had in Ghana based on this presuppositionalism.
30:02
And now he's back, and now he is translating How to Answer the Fool into Portuguese. Oh, yes. That's amazing. So, I mean, just the connections and like all over the place.
30:09
I was just in church last week, and this fellow, a friend of mine, Henk Reitenbeek, he's a policeman down there.
30:15
I thought you were going to say Hanegraaffel. No, but he comes up to me, and, you know, I want to talk about the stuff I do.
30:21
What do they want to talk about? Jeff Durbin. Oh. No, no, I'm saying, you know, we're just tools.
30:26
Yes. I mean, I know atheists love it when we say that. Yeah. But, you know, he just really loves the work, and I really love the influence that you guys are having, and I love my association with you guys.
30:34
Oh, we love it, too. I love the way you say Ghana, by the way. And I want you to, I hope you move out here. How do you say it? Ghana. That's the same.
30:39
No, you're like, Ghana. Ghana. Ghana. How do I say about? About.
30:45
About. About. No, you got just a little bit. Not a lot. Yeah. All right. By the way, speaking of how you say things,
30:50
I cannot hear the word confidence now without going. With. Faith. With. Faith.
30:56
But you all know that I got that from Doug Wilson. Yeah, yes. And you're fighting Jeff to say it, too.
31:01
You guys have it in your archive somewhere where one of you gave Doug the phone, and playing when I said it and Doug is watching, and I'm standing over his shoulder, talk about full circle.
31:10
Yes. You guys have a video somewhere? Yeah, we do. Yeah, that's right. Hey, Dan, Daniel, Dapper Dan, all of our boba just arrived.
31:18
Could you bring some of those in? Thanks, I don't want it to melt, thanks. Sorry guys, I'm maybe not the most professional of things, but I don't want my boba to melt.
31:26
You know what boba is? Boba, anybody watching online right now love boba? We love boba.
31:32
And we found the coolest, we have no connection with them, but the coolest boba place locally in Tempe, it's called
31:38
Kung Fu Tea, and they have the most crazy, delicious strawberry cream boba. It's like little tapioca balls inside, and it's amazing.
31:46
It's disgusting. Somebody just asked if you support Reformed Baptist views or adopted more of the
31:52
Calvinist position. That is the same thing. Oh, hang on a second.
32:00
That was probably directed at me. No, it was for Jeff, yeah. Hey, now that Marcus is gone, you have no Presbyterian. I know, we need more
32:05
Presby's, that's why you gotta move out, so we have a Presby in the studio constantly. You have to do something about that heat, though.
32:10
Yeah, that's true, yes. Although I love the temperature now. Now you know why people end up being tricked into moving here, is that people always invite people during like this time in wintertime, and they're like, oh, it's the greatest place ever.
32:22
How could you not wanna live here? And then summertime. Hi, Daniel, thank you, sir. Well, I often tell the
32:28
Bobby McCreary story. He was, oh, I miss Bobby, too. So I didn't want one, so he got the tarot one.
32:33
I got tarot. Thank you. This is Dapper Daniel. Dapper Dan, you guys know Dan. Terrible. Daniel. Hmm, thanks, bud.
32:40
But Bobby McCreary was evangelizing out in Georgia, and he was coming here for the Super Bowl, and he looked on the news, he said, people are dying from the heat, and he thought that was weird.
32:49
I mean, he lives in Georgia, a hot state, and he comes out of here, he's out in the street, he said the first thought that crossed his mind was
32:55
I might die. That's my thought. That global warming, though.
33:00
Well, I've been here for over 20 years, and that's my thought every summer. Yeah. But people say that about the cold in Canada, and you just adapt.
33:07
Yeah, well. This summer wasn't actually that bad. It was hot. It wasn't, no, we didn't have, it wasn't treacherous.
33:13
I don't even know if we hit 120 this year. Yeah, one year, I was 122 or 23.
33:21
It was unbelievable. Well, I remember when Marcus first moved out here, and you learn stuff that you don't know from other places, but he left a can of pop in his car.
33:31
Or soda, I don't know what you guys say to that. Thank you, thank you. Soda. I appreciate it, I feel homesick. Soda. Pop. And the thing blew up, and it was just all over his car.
33:38
You don't know stuff like that. You learn to drive in Arizona without touching anything in your car. You can drive 30 miles without ever touching anything, just with your mind.
33:47
That's why you need a Tesla, right? Yeah, that's right. You'd be amazed at what you can do when the wheel is 190 ,000 degrees.
33:54
Okay, so what we wanted to do today for today's show is we wanted to play sort of a throwback. We're gonna go and play an episode that I think,
34:01
I haven't checked the stats lately, but as far as I know, this is the most listened to episode of Apologia Radio in our history.
34:11
The last time I checked, there was over half a million views of this one episode.
34:17
And the interesting thing is I think it was like a month after the show, there was something like 350 ,000 listens.
34:25
So in a short period of time, it just went pretty crazy. Now the cool thing about this show is we were downtown at the radio station,
34:32
KPXQ. Cy joined us through Skype, I think. I think I was on the phone. Maybe he was on the phone, yeah.
34:38
And so we were in the radio station. We had a local atheist who was, is he the president of the
34:44
Local Atheist Society, ASU? Yeah, something like that. Something like that, a vice president or - Skeptic Society or -
34:49
Something like that, yeah. So we invited him on the show. With first hour, we had Cy on and the show was called, what's the show?
34:57
Answering the Fool - Answering the Fool with Cy Tunbrunke, yeah. You can still find it online. Oh yeah, yeah. If you Google search
35:02
Cy Tunbrunke, Jeff Durbin, and Andre, you'll see it come up, Answering the Fool with Cy Tunbrunke at Apologia Radio.
35:09
That's the one. So we have Cy on. We first spent an hour talking with Cy, and then we actually had
35:17
Andre in the studio. We talked a bit with Andre. Cool thing that happened though was when the official show ended,
35:25
Andre was still on, Cy was still on, and our tech just kept recording. And we continued on with like a 45 minute discussion,
35:31
I think, afterwards, off official radio, and all that's recorded for you.
35:37
And you actually see some very interesting things happen that last 45 minutes in terms of Andre's admissions, his argumentation.
35:46
He thought the radio show was over. And so did I. And so, yeah, actually we all did. I asked you afterwards.
35:51
I didn't, I was over like - Well, I was there and the thing that I said after, they said, please tell me that you recorded that.
35:59
And the interesting thing, Andre was really upset that he didn't know it was being recorded. I didn't know either, but I wasn't upset.
36:04
You were talking, what I said to Andre was you were talking into a microphone in a radio station. Right, but the thing is, it was the same with me.
36:10
And I don't mind. Why did he mind? I think because sadly he understands how it went. And sadly, you know,
36:16
I think we were kind to him, but his worldview did not fare so well. But I think since then he was not so happy with us.
36:23
I don't think it was the fact that, you know, we kept recording because, you know, that was a given, but I think it was the fact that his worldview did not fare well.
36:32
Andre Saleh, I'll go ahead and play. Something happened to my system here. It crashed and I pulled it back up.
36:39
So we'll just try to start it at some point here. So I'm not saying I'm denying it. I'm just asking you to explain it. So you have granted me the possible avenue to certainty there.
36:46
No, no, no, not at all. I'm just asking you to explain. I'm saying it's impossible. And if you're saying that it's possible, I want you to explain how that's possible.
36:53
Okay, well, I can't explain how that's possible. What I would like to interject into this conversation is that this granted based on my observation, which could very well be flawed,
37:02
I will grant that assumption again, for lack of a better term, into the discussion. I do not have a choice in the matter from what
37:09
I can observe as to whether or not I perceive the natural world in the way that I do.
37:17
Are you certain that you don't have a choice, sir? I admitted that there is an assumption there. However, you do have the choice as to whether or not you will believe in a deity.
37:24
I don't, the choice as to whether or not I see light isn't my decision.
37:31
It happens whether I act upon it or not. If I can tell myself that I don't wish to see it,
37:36
I can try to block it out and tell myself that the light isn't there, but I don't have any ability to manipulate the reality that I live in in such a way that it's different.
37:46
So why do you do that? Well, I want to say first of all, I prefaced this with Andre. I said, look,
37:52
I know that people accuse me of jumping, but I said, if you make knowledge claims, because we basically exposed the fact that he could not have knowledge, and he admitted that.
38:01
And I said, I don't want to appear like a jerk. I don't want to appear rude, which people often think that's the case. But when they make a knowledge claim,
38:07
I don't want them to ramble on past that. I want to hold the mirror up to them and say, look, you have said that you can have knowledge.
38:15
You admit that, and you make a knowledge claim. And it's not like I'm just jumping in. You'll hear if you listen earlier in the podcast that I said, look, you know,
38:22
I apologize, but if you make a knowledge claim, I'm going to jump in, because that's inconsistent with your worldview. So let's make sure everyone hears that clearly.
38:29
When Sai asked the question, are you certain about that? Just know this, it's not a word game.
38:34
It's not just a tactic. It's a genuine challenge to the unbeliever who will grant,
38:41
I can't have certainty. No laws of logic are not like a real thing.
38:47
It's just something happening in my brain. There's no meaning or no purpose to life. And then they go on making challenges to the
38:53
Christian God. They make all these claims about knowledge and the world and themselves and even Sai.
38:58
So when Sai challenges and says, are you certain about that? He's pressing on the unbeliever who has already given up knowledge and is now continuing to make knowledge claims.
39:09
And the purpose, why? That's what I want to ask you. Why do that? Like, why continue to press? Are you trying to accomplish something?
39:15
Well, you have shown this before as well, the analogies that we're showing them what they're standing on.
39:22
But the thing is what we say is that we can't convert people. So we're not giving them the truth so that they'll repent.
39:29
2 Timothy 2, 24 and 25 says, in the hope that God grants them repentance, leading them to a knowledge of the truth.
39:35
So we're not giving them the truth so that they'll repent. We're giving them the truth so that in the hopes that God grants them repentance and they have something to be converted to.
39:44
We hope that God opens their eyes to the folly of what they're saying. Because people often ask, how many people do you lead to Jesus Christ with this apologetic?
39:52
We say each and every one of them. What they do with him is up to them. But we show them that without Christ, they can't make sense of anything.
40:00
It's not just like people have the analogy of the three -legged stool. If you just have Jesus Christ in that fourth leg, then your life will be better.
40:07
They have nothing. And I'm not going to apologize for Jesus Christ and say you just need Jesus and your life will be a little bit better.
40:12
No, without him, you have nothing. You can't have that sentence that you just spoke to me. But you have to do it in love.
40:18
That's right. And I try to. Yes, absolutely. All of us continuing to grow in that area. You just said there about the light can help, but you have no ability to block it.
40:26
It's going to expose regardless. That's what we're saying about where every atheist is at.
40:32
Understand our position is that all of us are image bearers of God and we're fallen, we're rebels. And the truth about God and his existence and his eminence is impossible to move away from.
40:42
And so with your example of light, I would actually expose that and bring that back to this issue of God. We would say this is that your position as an image bearer of God is inescapable.
40:53
And this entire time you have displayed a suppression at times in your life of your position before God because you're imaging
41:01
God all over your life. And then when we point it out to you, you've tried to push it back down again. You make knowledge claims. And then we point it out to you, you can't do that with your atheism.
41:08
You push it back down again. Yeah, I can't make those certain claims. And we talk about the universe and appealing to laws as the future be like the past, all those different things.
41:17
We point that out to you, you realize with your atheism, you can't have that, so you push that back down. And so our call to you is this, and I'll let you and Cy finish up here.
41:24
My call to you is this, is just know this. Listen, there's no difference between Cy and me and Luke and you in the sense of image bearers of God that are fallen sinners.
41:31
What we're saying is this, is that Christ is God in the flesh. He lived perfectly, died for sinners and rose from the dead. And the call is this, is that you would turn to him to trust in him for salvation and forgiveness.
41:41
That's the love and the concern we have for you. And we're saying this, that until you do that, your worldview is gonna constantly collapse at every turn.
41:48
So this I think is important to share in terms of people saying, give me a real picture of what's really happening here.
41:55
What are you trying to accomplish? What we would say is that our apologetic cannot be divorced from our theology.
42:08
It can't be divorced from the gospel. So our evangelism should be wrapped up in apologetics.
42:16
They shouldn't be two separate things. Like I shouldn't be going, okay, I'm working as an apologist over here, trying to work through reasoning and evidence and all the proofs, which by the way, it's amazing.
42:25
I used to see the books on my shelf in terms of Old Testament history, archeology, science, astronomy.
42:30
I love all of it and I am in it. What we're saying is you can't be faithful in this particular discussion where you say over here,
42:41
I'm gonna be the apologist. I'm gonna try to point them to some general deity and try to work my way up to Jesus.
42:47
And then when they finally go, okay, maybe there's a God, go great, let me now put the other hat on now. And now
42:53
I'm the Christian and I'm gonna tell you about the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the demands on your life, the call to repent, the call to believe. Those are very strange, like opposed things.
43:02
We're saying that biblically, that apologetic methodology has to be wrapped up in the evangelistic call, they're one in the same.
43:10
So at least together as you're moving through this with the unbelievers. So in this case with Andre, we're trying to expose the borrowed capital.
43:19
He's borrowing from Christianity to make sense of his world. We're trying to, so the collapse of the atheistic position, but notice how the gospel gets in, right?
43:28
Like, why are you saying all these things to me? Well, your suppression of truth, your folly that you're living right now, making ethical appeals while you believe you're just an
43:35
African ape, you know, in a meaningless cosmos. All that shows that you know the God that I'm talking about and that you're really, really at war with God, that's the problem.
43:42
It's not light, evidence, none of those things. It's you're at war with God. Repent of your sin and turn to Christ for salvation.
43:48
So it's, that's the whole goal. I don't want to have an argument with an unbeliever where they can even conclude that God exists and say, but guess what?
43:56
I didn't need him to get there. I used my own autonomous reasoning to conclude that God exists.
44:02
I say, well, you didn't conclude the God that I believe in because the God that I believe in is necessary for your reasoning. And that's what we try to expose.
44:09
And we try to do it with love. But you know, I was listening, I was telling you, I was listening to this on my drive in. And one thing people are familiar with doing these type of discussions, a lot of times
44:16
I'll be listening and I'll be answering, thinking of how I'm going to answer. And I wasn't listening so much to what you were saying.
44:22
And I listened to it again on the drive in. And we thought that it got really good after the show was over.
44:28
But man, it was good before. Cause I was listening to the stuff you were saying to him and we make a good team. It's almost like good cop, bad cop.
44:34
Yeah. But no, it was, you know, I really encourage people. Maybe you could put a link to it or something.
44:39
Absolutely. And the thing is, it's not because we don't say that we're particularly good at this. It was really blessed, I think. Yes. You know that, and it's sad that Andre had to experience that and we'd still pray for him.
44:49
We hope that God saves him. But I really encourage people to go and listen to it because I was listening to it. And just the things that you had said, man,
44:56
I loved it. I think we make a good team. Yeah, we do. And I think it was a good opportunity to share.
45:03
Like we could talk all day long about the apologetic methodology. And we talk about the scriptures. We can talk about the philosophy and we can try to, you know, work things out.
45:09
But for people to hear in one episode, us describing biblical approach to reaching the unbeliever and then actually having somebody who was not a schlub.
45:19
He was sophisticated. He's a very intelligent man. And to have it actually work itself out in the same episode
45:24
I think was a tremendous gift. One of the worst things that I see on Facebook or something when somebody is talking with a family member and they say, man,
45:32
I wish Cy was there or I wish Jeff was there. You know, what I want people to do is hear something like this and say,
45:38
I can do that. Because a lot of times I'll go to a conference and I say, you know, today, I'm not gonna teach you how to defend the existence of God.
45:44
I'm gonna teach you how to defend the fact that your parents exist. They say, what are you talking about? That's crazy. They say, what do you need this crazy
45:50
Canadian to teach me how to defend that my parents exist? I said, why would that be crazy? Because you know your parents.
45:56
You know them better than I do. You don't need me to come here and teach you that your parents exist. What am I doing here teaching you how to defend the fact that God exists?
46:03
So the problem isn't pre -submission. It's not evidence, it's relational. And if you know that God, you can talk about him and not apologize for what the scripture says.
46:12
Now we get, sure, more philosophical with some of these people, but everybody can do this. You should have no fear when you talk to an unbeliever if you stick to the foundation of the truth of God's word.
46:22
When the Bible says that the person who denies God is a fool, that's true. It is true.
46:29
We were at that conference together in Florida and that one pastor talked about the direct Hebrew translation where we read it as the fool has said in his heart, there is no
46:36
God. And now I've never researched this myself, but he said that the best Hebrew translation is the fool says in his heart, no
46:43
God for me. And I thought, you know, that seems very appropriate. You know, that's what
46:50
I say. Jesus Christ or absurdity, but people choose absurdity because they love their sin. And that's what this apologetic does.
46:56
That's right. Well, I don't want to change the subject, but I'm just thinking like. Well, you got them. I had one of those,
47:01
I'm not saying that I know what snot tastes like, I'm not saying that, but I've had one of those ones and just that stuff going down your throat.
47:09
You don't just swallow them and you chew them up. They're like gummy bears. They're like gummy. Oh, you thought you were swallowing them? He's like, why would anybody want to just choke these down?
47:19
They're like gummy bears. Well, I'm just thinking like real life, how does like this apply real life practically?
47:25
And, you know, I was talking about abortion a lot here and I'm just sitting here thinking how this directly applies to the fight against abortion, right?
47:34
Because you have the majority of the pro -life movement being
47:39
Catholic, essentially, not attacking abortion with the gospel, you know?
47:45
And so, and this is probably fresh in my mind because I'm preparing for Australia and I'm talking about this a little bit, but like ultimately that's how we approach even the fight against abortion is with presuppositionalism because we're standing on God's word and it has to be with the gospel, right?
48:01
It has to be with a reason to repent. And, you know, it has to be with an understanding of morality and logic.
48:07
And if you don't have those, you're not gonna win the fight. Yeah, but one way
48:13
I look at it too is think of what will happen if you win the argument. If you win the argument that it's a baby.
48:20
That's why I never argue science at the clinics. I'm not saying I'm opposed to it, but I think of that conversation that John Piper had with that abortion doctor.
48:27
I don't know if you heard about that. He had a list of 10 different things to prove to this abortion doctor that what he was doing was killing a human being.
48:34
And he goes and he has lunch with this fellow and John Piper is in the first one and the guy stops and he says, oh, I know they're humans.
48:39
Oh yeah, they know, yeah. So what I say is even if you save a life, which I think is fantastic, but if they're not saved, you're just prolonging the inevitable.
48:49
They need to be saved. And that's the same with winning an argument. You can win an argument evidentially, but there's still the judge.
48:55
So I think that when we have these arguments, we show that God is necessary for everything. One thing that I do when
49:03
I'm at the campus, I say your problem is that you hate God. And they say, no,
49:08
I don't hate God. I'm just, you know, I'm just, I don't really think there's anything out there. No, the problem is, no, I really don't think so.
49:13
I say, well, you're at this beautiful campus here. Now imagine that there's people here whose parents paid for them to be here.
49:20
And imagine they go home for spring break, beautiful mansion, you know their parents are wealthy and they're waiting for them at the front door and you walk in the front door and the person looks at their parents and says, who are you?
49:30
I know that I have parents, but I don't think you're them. You know what, I'm in a good mood today.
49:35
You could spend the night here, but if you're here in the morning, I'm calling the cops. Now, what would the parents think to that? Why does our son hate us all of a sudden?
49:43
I say, how much worse is that to the God who's giving you the very next breath? Who's giving the next beat of your heart and you're saying, there might be something out there.
49:52
It's exponentially worse that when you do that to the God who has given you life and you say, oh, there might be something. I say, that is a hatred towards God.
49:58
Even though you don't feel his hatred, it is. Right. And God is gracious and merciful.
50:04
And the amazing thing is that he is so patient with all of us. And that even in these moments where you have unbelievers, atheists railing against God, people denying his very existence after God just fed them and caused them to breathe and a heart to be, as he's sustaining him in that moment, and they're like, no
50:21
God, no God. He's still gracious and he's still merciful to everybody, every moment. It's like Van Til's example of their argument against the existence of air.
50:30
Right. Breathing it all the while. Yes, that's right. A few more thoughts here. In response to that,
50:37
I think that, of course, the two of you are continually bringing up the knowledge claims.
50:42
However, I shouldn't have to regularly reassert that I am making assumptions that I perceive this reality.
50:48
You shouldn't have to? I shouldn't have to because I - Who made that rule? Who made that law? You shouldn't.
50:53
Is there an obligation? This is precisely my concern is, within this conversation,
50:58
I have already established that the atheistic worldview depends on assumptions that things exist. It depends on assumptions that our senses aren't lying to us.
51:08
Is lying okay? What if your senses were lying? Did you catch it? Did you see it? Did you see it all there? We're challenging the unbeliever and all these claims he's making, and he says, you know,
51:17
I gotta trust that my senses aren't lying to me. And the Christian goes, yeah, cause that'd be bad. And you go, wait, hold everything for a moment now.
51:25
This is an atheist who doesn't believe that lying ultimately has any meaning at all.
51:31
It's not like a law out there in the universe, like that's an absolute. I mean, it might make people uncomfortable, but there's no law against lying.
51:38
And so when the atheist is concerned that his senses may be lying to him, he doesn't want that, he's borrowing capital from the
51:45
Christian worldview. In the Christian worldview, God cannot lie. Lying is an absolute immoral thing.
51:52
You shall not lie. That's a commandment from God or a reflection of his own character. So the
51:57
Christian listens to the unbeliever in this moment, and the unbeliever's going, man, I really hope my senses aren't lying to me.
52:03
And Christian goes, yeah, that'd be bad. Let's work through those senses. And it's like, wait a second, this person is arguing against the triune
52:09
God of the universe. And he's talking about senses lying to him. So when you hear Sinai going, hey, pump the brakes for just a second, you just said lying as though it were some problem.
52:21
Now it is for me, but I wanna know how it is for you. Why are you worried about that? You're an atheist.
52:27
And then the atheist goes, well, I grant as an atheist, I gotta have certain assumptions. Well, for what?
52:33
Well, otherwise the world wouldn't work. Ah, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's right. That's the world you're living in because you're living in God's world, not some made up world that blew up out of nothing and is the random result of evolutionary process that they didn't have in mind.
52:48
What did we establish in that discussion too? What are assumptions? They're faith claims. Yeah. So the unbeliever is faith.
52:58
The unbeliever is just establishing that his worldview is based on faith. And one thing that I said in that discussion with him, it's not only based on faith, it's based on blind faith because they don't have revelation from an all knowing, all wise
53:09
God as we do. And he admitted that according to our worldview, yes, we can have certainty. He kept trying to track back on that.
53:16
Then he said, well, I can have it from logical laws, the condition of the, I said, well, fine. If you wanna retract your claim that you can have certainty, show how you can have it that way.
53:24
Well, I really can't. It's not really my position and it's a mess. It is a mess. That's the folly of the unbelieving position.
53:30
But what I'm pointing out here is that I've had to continuously reassert these assumptions when
53:36
I'm making my statements because my statements are continuously being challenged. But the reason you have to keep reasserting them is because you keep denying them with the things that you say.
53:43
Right, that's what we're pointing out to you is that you're telling us about your worldview, but then we ask you to justify these claims.
53:49
You can't do it and you won't do it. Well, we need to understand that my worldview is within the context of the assumptions.
53:55
And did you get it? Please tell me you got it. Please tell me you caught it because that's so, so, so important.
54:02
Here's an unbeliever who gets to the point through the discussion that he gets whittled all the way down to the point where he goes, granted, my position is based upon certain presuppositions, right?
54:15
And I'm carrying those presuppositions into this conversation throughout life. And I grant that these are atheistic assumptions and I can do nothing without them.
54:24
Now, what we're doing is going, right, because everybody does that. For the Christian, we are saying our presupposition, our starting assumptions are based upon the revelation of God, who
54:38
God is, he's a central reference point, his character, his law, his word, all those things. The unbeliever goes, when he's honest, although he doesn't have to be, he goes, well, mine are atheistic assumptions.
54:49
We go, great, let's let those assumptions collide. And let's see who is acting consistently with their assumptions.
54:56
Let's see whose assumptions and presuppositions can make sense of this conversation we're having and the world that we live in.
55:02
And what we kept doing with Andre, we kept pointing out to him, you aren't even trying to even justify your assumptions.
55:09
You're just saying, I just need a gimme. Can you just gimme these? That's what the unbeliever wants.
55:14
He wants a gimme. He says, can you just give me logic, please? Can you just give me ethical appeals, please?
55:21
Can you just give me a uniform universe where I can depend on induction and the uniformity in nature in order to actually drive my car and walk my dog and brush my teeth?
55:32
Can I just have that, please? And what we're saying is that faithful Christian apologetics is gonna go to the unbeliever where he lives, right there, and go, hey, guess what?
55:43
The God you're warring against, he gives you all those things. And without him, you don't get to have them. You don't get to walk your dog.
55:49
You don't get to drive your car. You don't get to brush your teeth. You don't get to have logical appeals. You don't get to have history. You don't get to have science. You don't have morality.
55:55
You get none of it without this God. Do you know what the problem is? Because there's been some attacks on presuppositionalism very recently.
56:03
And it's very interesting, the list that you give. But these things, they say, can I have this? Can I have this? Sadly, the other apologetic methodology, the person says, yeah, you can have them.
56:14
They say, I won't. I love my Lord enough that, and I'm not saying they don't love the Lord. Of course.
56:19
I'm saying this is something that's been drilled into them their entire lives. But no, you cannot have that. They belong to Jesus Christ.
56:26
Yes. If you have a fight with somebody, they got a pea shooter and you got a gun, they say, can I have your gun? I'm sorry.
56:32
No. No, sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. Hey, does this mean it's over? I think, yeah, we're wrapping up.
56:38
I gotta give a quick shout out to Ricky. We got three minutes, we're good. Oh, Ricky Roldan from Reform Presuppositional Apologetics Facebook group.
56:45
He asked me to give him a shout out and I'm happy to do that. There's a lot of these discussions in that Facebook group. I encourage people to go there and check it out.
56:51
Excellent. There you go, Ricky. Excellent, eh? Eh. This was an excellent broadcast, eh? Did I say eh? Yeah, no, you didn't.
56:57
C -A -N -A -D -A. We had a bunch of hosers at church on Sunday. Yeah. Cy was there and Steve and Leah were there.
57:04
You know what I think is very interesting is that people think that the term Canuck is offensive to us, but we call ourselves
57:09
Canucks. I mean, there's a hockey team called Vancouver Canucks. I've never heard Canuck in my life. What's Canuck? It's a slang for like,
57:15
I prefer Canuck over hoser, but I really don't care. Hoser is the Bob and Doug McKenzie thing. Yeah. Ah, you hoser.
57:21
Canuck convention. Man, I love you guys. I love you, dude. We love you. We're praying that maybe you move out here.
57:28
So, hey, we love you guys. Please go check out more at ApologyofStudios .com.
57:35
Again, Answering the Fool with Sy 10 Bruggenkate. It is up at, it's on them internets.
57:42
Just look it up. We'll put the link up for you guys. I encourage you. It's like I said, it's two and a half hours long.
57:49
It's, I think, very informative. It'll be helpful. This is a throwback to that. Be sure to check out Sy's websites, once again, for those people that just popped in.
57:57
PropheticGodExists .org or just go to YouTube and look for How to Answer the Fool. You can see the film. And on my main channel, there's a lot more of the street interactions, but, you know, people watch that.
58:06
They end up hating me, so just watch the film. Watch the film. Hey, so a couple things I don't wanna forget. Please pray for us.
58:11
We are heading to Australia and to New Zealand. Hey, my brother lives in Brisbane. I hope you get a chance to see him. Oh, that'd be awesome. Does he know about where, send him a, make sure he gets a link to where we're gonna be at.
58:20
And he actually called into Dr. White's show a couple weeks ago, and he never told him that he was my brother. Oh, that's funny. But right after this,
58:25
I'm going to Dr. White's studio. Hopefully he doesn't ask me to be on camera, but I get to watch a dividing line. You need to tell him. I'm hoping he puts you on.
58:31
No. Message Dr. White and tell him. No, no, no. Yeah, I'm gonna send him a quick message. So we're heading to Australia and Brisbane, sorry,
58:38
Australia, Brisbane and Sydney, and to Christchurch, New Zealand for end abortion now.
58:43
We're gonna equip the churches out there to work against the evil of abortion with the gospel itself as local churches.
58:54
And that's happening, we're leaving November 6th. I think the first one is November the 10th. And then I think it's the 12th.
58:59
And I think it's the 14th or 15th in New Zealand. So if you guys are out there in Australia or New Zealand, come and meet with us, guys.
59:07
Please pray for us as we go. One more announcement. Big thing, we have a new show we are premiering right here from the creators of Apologia Studios.
59:16
It is called Cultish. It's gonna drop on October 31st.
59:21
And you'll be able to get it at apologiastudios .com forward slash cultish. Of course, we're gonna put it across all our platforms.
59:29
We're gonna drop the first four episodes in one day. All the premier episodes, we're engaging with Jim Jones.
59:37
Horrifying. Let me just tell you, horrifying. You're gonna listen to the actual audio of the day of the suicide. We're gonna play through that.
59:44
We also engage with some of Apollo Kvipoloi, the Filipino son of God, false messiah.
59:50
We also talk about the Jesus of the cults. And we interview our good friend, Andrea Schwartz, who was high up in Scientology, her and her husband.
59:59
May Andrea Schwartz be with you. When she turned to Christ, her and her husband turned to Christ, they left Scientology. Scientology put a contract out on their lives.
01:00:07
So we engage with Scientology. All of that, apologiastudios .com forward slash cultish. Tom Cruise could probably get that done.
01:00:14
Yeah. That's dangerous. Probably. All right, guys, love you all. Thank you so much for supporting Apologia Church through all of our ministries.
01:00:21
Encourage you to go and sign up for all access. Join with us as we bring the gospel around the world and provide a defense of the gospel.
01:00:29
You do so by signing up for all access. And when you do, you get the TV show, you get the after show, you get Apologia Academy, and more important, you actually help us to communicate the gospel around the world with shows just like this.
01:00:41
Also, isn't there some content in all access with Cy? Well, I was talking to Marcus about that and they never put it together.
01:00:48
I did one, but I think there was an audio glitch, but I think he found another file. So he might be putting that together.
01:00:54
Because it turned out really well. We did that in the other studio. Okay, so there's the apologetic stuff with Dr. White, with me, of course, there's stuff we've done forever with Cy.
01:01:02
We've got stuff with Douglas Wilson. We've got just tons of stuff up there, guys. We just encourage you to go check it out. All access at apologiastudios .com.
01:01:09
Thank you all for listening today. Make sure you guys share the content. We love you all. Thank you for praying for us.