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The "Canadian Atheist" and podcaster Michael Stuart comes on to discuss the beliefs of atheism and Christianity.
Go to ApologeticsLive.com to get the links to join the discussion live.
This is Apologetics Live, to answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.
Alright, well welcome. We are live, Apologetics Live, here on Thursday night to answer any of your apologetic questions. We do this every week, where we are open for any questions you may have, we're here to do that, and if you want to join, just go to ApologeticsLive .com, and that is the place to go, there is a link to join, just look for the little duck, that's actually the easiest way to figure it out, it is, we use StreamYard, and there is a link there to join, just click on the duck, and there is some instructions there as well, if you are joining on Facebook and want your comments to be seen, with your name on it, so just know to do that.
So if you want to join again, just go to ApologeticsLive .com, I'm your host Andrew Rappaport, yes, I'm back in the seat, after some time, and as you can look behind me and see there's actually books on the bookshelf, it means I finally unpacked the books, after nine long months, it's been a while.
So let me bring in our Dr. Silvestro, how are you doing this evening? Great, how are you? Good, good, and I'm going to bring in Pastor Justin. Hello. Alright, so let's start, we got Michael here, we wanted to jump right to him, we were going to have a discussion on masks, whether to wear them or not, why don't we hold that over, because I don't know how long Michael has, so I want to make sure we get in, give him plenty of time.
So for folks who may not have seen the description for this episode, Michael is a Canadian, A, and he's got a podcast called The Canadian Atheist, I know, I used A in the wrong way, there's actually a proper way when you're supposed to say A at the end, but.
I'm sure I still have to apologize for it anyway, so.
You know, I was told by a Canadian how to spell Canada. Oh really? A, B, A.
There you go, there you go. Thanks so much for having me.
Yeah, why don't, for folks who are not familiar with you, how about you introduce yourself first and, you know, if you want, you could, you reached out to me to, actually for me to come on to your podcast and be on here, but that was actually a long time ago, so, before I moved, so I said I need time to move, to unpack, so, but introduce yourself to folks.
Yeah, again, thanks so much for having me, so my name is Michael, and a little over three and a half years or so ago, I started a podcast with a dear friend of mine, Dean, it's his birthday today, happy birthday brother, and after this is all done, I'm going to post a link to this on our podcast page, and for everybody who's listening, I haven't been replaced by a doppelganger, but because I'm on a Christian channel, just like when we have Christians on our show, I will of course be respectful and not be swearing like I normally do, so, yeah, it's actually me, but yeah, I, we love having Christians on and talking to Christians and doing little debate things, we've done a bunch of debates on, modern day debates with James, who's amazing, and yeah, I love talking about religion, Christianity in particular, because it's what I'm most familiar with, and discussing people's beliefs, and see where the conversation goes, so, I submit myself to you for this evening.
Well, you had reached out, you saw my discussion, I wouldn't say it was a debate, discussion with Schuyler Fiction that we had done on this channel.
Yeah, and it was great, I really enjoyed watching that, I'm a big fan of Schuyler, I think he's a great guy, and he has some great conversations, and now he's got Dr. Josh with him, who's a real powerhouse, as far as being an expert in the ancient Near East, it's great to see the stuff that they have, but it was interesting, because I think the first time, Andrew, I was exposed to you was actually through the Bible Thumping Wingnut, and Tim, and Matt Slick, and those guys, and that was, I think, my first exposure to you a number of years ago, but it's interesting to see how you have evolved, and now have your own thing going on, and I've watched a number of the conversations that you've been involved with, and that's why I reached out to you, was because I wanted to have some similar conversations like that.
Debating is one thing, and debating can be fun, sometimes it's nice to pick a fight, but I find that more often it's.
More constructive to have discussions. Yeah, I would agree, and so, you know, I gave you a choice of, hey, what would you want to talk about tonight, and you wanted to talk about, you know, our beliefs as a good starting place, and so that, you know, a good place to start is where our differences are, so I want to let you start off with your position, you know, what brought you to atheism, what it is that you believe, if you see a bunch of, Anthony's trying to control, for those who are watching, we really shouldn't let Anthony have controls, he's like,.
Putting up people's, just saying hi, you know. I'm not saying I did it, but it might be me.
If Pastor Chris shows up, I'm going to give him props and say, hi, Pastor Chris,.
Thank you for showing up. Yeah, so, you know, I see that it's like, just flashing, because you're all like, just back and forth, so this would be a good show to watch if you have ADD, because obviously, Justin and Anthony do.
Oh, yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, but so, Michael, go ahead, why don't you start off with your position, what you believe.
Okay, so I was raised kind of a nominal Christian, this will, I'm sure it'll make a few heads cocked to the side, my mom was Catholic and my dad was Lutheran, so have some fun with that, but I was raised kind of a nominal Christian, you know, kind of high holiday Catholic, and nothing was really pressed on me too much, I started asking a bunch of questions of my mom and dad, who both worked like crazy people to try to support five kids, they were always busy, so my mom sent me off to church, and I went to church and kind of, you know, bought into it, bought into it, I believed it, or at least I think I did, and everything was fine until I guess I hit my late teens, early 20s, started asking more questions, couldn't get some great answers to those questions, called myself agnostic for a bunch of years, and, but the more I read, the more I studied, the less I was able to reconcile the problems that I found, and I guess it was about maybe 15 years or so ago, I'm 49 now, so I guess it was probably my, I'd say my early, maybe more than 15 years ago, my early 30s when I kind of said, yeah, I'm an atheist, and so that can be a contentious word, even within the community, you'll find people arguing about that, and it's infighting that kind of upsets me within our own community, you'll see people, lots of people who say, you know, atheism is just the lack of belief in a god or gods, depends what you look at, that's certainly what the dictionary says, if you look at it from a more philosophical perspective, then it says, you know, it's the belief that gods don't exist, which is the position that I take, and I take that mostly with the Christian God, because I haven't, I can't honestly say that about all gods, because I haven't researched them all.
I've read the Quran, it's a painful book to try to read, especially in an English translation, I've read some other holy books, studied with lots of different groups of people, people that I think a lot of your listeners would see as maybe not Christians, like Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, I've got some funny stories if anybody wants to hear some of those, and yeah, so now I'm an atheist.
I would also say that, and I said this in, I think, a message with you, Andrew, I think that, I think there's a lot, I think there's some skirting within the atheist community. I accept the fact that my lack of a belief, strong lack of belief in the Christian God, does burden me with, I guess, place a burden of proof on me, and I don't shirk that responsibility.
I think I should, I think atheists who say, God doesn't exist, I don't believe in God, I think they should be able to give a reason for that, just the same way as 1st Peter 3 .15 says that you should give a reason for the faith that's within you, so that's a little bit about me.
Helps if I unmute. So, yeah, I mean, obviously, folks who know, you know, or at least who, I'll give what I believe, when I think that Anthony and Justin are going to pretty much agree, and if not, they're just wrong.
We have to let him back onto this podcast. Yeah, why do you let me back on my own show?
So, as a Christian, and, you know, Michael, you may not know as much of my background, you were raised, as you said, in a nominal Christian family. I was raised in a Jewish home. I was raised to believe Jesus Christ is Hitler's God.
I did not, I was not looking for a savior. I wasn't looking for help. I wasn't looking for anything. It was really, for me, it was an issue of mathematics. It was a thing where someone was going through the prophecies of the scripture, and I was running calculations, and what I was doing in my head was putting those things that would be coincidence versus self-fulfilling.
Anything self-fulfilling, I'm going to ignore, because if it's something that someone can fulfill on their own, make happen, then you could do that to make it seem like it's a prophecy. So, I was looking for things that were, in my mind, genuine prophecies that would be in the coincidence category, and in that light, I ended up coming to the point of realizing that when you look at all of the prophecies that Christ fulfilled, it is beyond statistical impossibility that these occurred by coincidence.
It is, it's just mathematically impossible. So, which is 10 to the 48th power, for those that want to know what that statistic is. So, I ended up believing in the New Testament, not necessarily Christ.
Remember, I was raised believing Jesus Christ is Hitler's God. I wasn't looking to be a follower of his, but mathematically, I had to realize that this can't be by coincidence. So, I then started to say, okay, what does the New Testament believe?
Really, the issue for me, and this would be true for all Christians, that we believe that Jesus Christ is Almighty God, who came to earth as a man, died on a cross in the place of our sins, and sins are basically a breaking of his law of anything going against the nature of God.
And so, what I ended up realizing is that, I always knew that I was a sinner. That was not a struggle. I almost burned my house down twice. My mother put it out with a fire extinguisher the second time, we called the fire department.
So, I got better at my sin, but the thing is that I didn't think I needed a savior. I actually believed that being Jewish, I was God's chosen people. And I actually said I was God's chosen people, as in like Flynn, I didn't think I needed to be right with God.
I thought my birth gave me that right. And so, that's sort of how you're raised when you're Jewish. And so, what I needed or ended up seeing is that as I looked at the New Testament, what it taught, that Jesus Christ not only died, but he rose from the dead three days later.
And that vindicates everything he said about himself, that he is God, that he has the ability to offer the forgiveness of sin, and that he did die in our place. That, you know, so many people try to deal with guilt of sin in so many different ways, whether it's drugs or alcohol or work or lots of different things.
And yet, the thing we end up seeing is there's not the only way to have genuine forgiveness is in Christ. We can mask things. So, for me, it was more of a logical thing. But what is a Christian's belief?
Well, put it simply, I would hold to two presuppositions that I believe everyone knows, okay, that everyone knows God exists, and that he has spoken. And so, we end up seeing that in Romans chapter one, that God has made his attributes and his power absolutely clear to all.
So, no one is without excuse. God is not going to judge any of us based on a knowledge we don't have. He has given us a knowledge of him. He's given us a conscience so we know right from wrong. And we know that we're not right by his standard.
And so, we need to be right in his standard. And he did that by dying on the cross for us. And so, with that, what we need to do is to repent. It means to turn from trusting ourself as a good person, or to trust my good works, or in my case, to trust my Judaism, and to trust what Christ did on the cross as a payment of sin.
So, that would be what I would hold to. I know that Anthony and Justin would hold pretty much the same. So, let me ask you some questions, Michael,.
With what you said. Just before you do that, I saw a little comment pop up on the screen there that Melissa said a lot of atheists come out of Catholicism. So, my mom was Catholic. I wasn't raised Catholic, just as a point of correction.
Oh, okay. Actually, what I would say is in all.
The evangelism I do, especially on college campuses, the vast majority of people that call themselves agnostic or atheist either grew up in what they would call a Christian home or a Catholic home. So, we do make the distinction.
We would not say Catholics are Christians. So, in your case, you kind of grew up with both, right? You know, you grew up with a Catholic mom, you said, and a Lutheran dad. Yep. And they were very consistent with what we typically see.
Yeah, but I just want.
To make a distinction that I wasn't actually raised Catholic. Out of curiosity, were you raised with any religious background? Yeah, like I said, kind of nominal Christian, you know, kind of the, you know, high holiday stuff, things like that.
But again, like to reiterate, my parents both basically killed themselves, were not killed, literally killed themselves working and, you know, trying to raise, take care of five kids, right? So, it was when I started asking the questions, my mom kind of sent me off to church.
And I ended up going to, I started off at the Salvation Army. And then I ended up at a Presbyterian church because it was closer to home.
And that's kind of where I stayed. So, all right. So, it was kind of interesting, you say the high holy days, which was, that's a Jewish term. Like holiday, you know, like, Christmas and Easter, but yeah, that's kind of interesting.
But so, what were some of the questions that you had that you said in your testimony there, you said you just couldn't get answers to? What were some of those questions that you had? Well, I mean, it started with,.
It started mostly with reading the Bible. I have read it more than once, and some portions more than others. But like you've probably heard from more before from other atheists, it was hard for me to get at a Genesis without cocking my head to the side and said, this doesn't make any sense.
I couldn't reconcile it with what I was learning at school, you know, from a science perspective. And I'm not a scientist in any way. That's the one thing I don't talk about online is what I do for a living.
I'll say that for a living. What is it you do for a living? And how much do you make? And then.
My formal education is in social work. But that's not what I do for a living. I'm a public servant.
Yeah. There's reasons that some people don't share what they do for a living. And you know, when they're, yeah. Especially in the cancel culture. Maybe you don't have that in Canada.
Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah. And in the, well, it's less prevalent in Canada, but with social media, it's everywhere. And so anyway, you asked me a question, you know, what I had to reconcile. And it was mostly the things that I was learning in school were the things that I would read in the Bible.
And I would ask, you know, I'd ask my parents about it. And, you know, they did their best to try to guide me. And mostly my mom ended up just sending me back to church to ask those questions. And it ended up coming down a lot to, you know, you have to have faith, you have to have faith, stuff like that.
And I eventually got to the point where I could no longer, yeah, basically where I could no longer reconcile the things that I read in the Bible that did not make sense with what I was learning. And that was about it.
Okay. So, so it sounds like you're.
Saying science became your authority, right? Because given the two, you're saying it doesn't make sense, but it doesn't make sense. Seems you're comparing it. I'm just asking for clarification. It sounds like you're saying that it doesn't make sense what you were learning in school, in science class, compared to what the Bible says.
Not just in science, but I mean, and just in things that we could, and now I'm kind of expanding on that to where I am now. The things that the Bible says that we just know just aren't possible. Like the firmament, right?
Like, it's just like the firmament is not possible. Authority is the Bible, right? I get that. But there was never such a thing as a firmament.
How are you defining a firmament? Just so I understand.
Crystalline dome that the Bible says separated the waters above from the waters below it.
Okay. Well, not possible. Well, there's no crystalline dome.
Yeah. The Bible says there was. Separating the waters below from the waters above.
Where were the waters above it? Well, we see that now, don't we? No, we don't. Okay. Have you ever seen an ocean? Well, sure. Yeah. I've seen clouds. Yes. What are they made of?
Well, they're made of vapor. I mean, again, I'm not a scientist. Yeah. Water molecules. Are you testing what that Bible meant?
Well, you can say that's part of it. I mean, you're asking a question based upon what it would have been like pre-flood geology. Basically, you're talking about pre-fall, pre-flood geology, the way that God created everything when he first created the whole entire world and he ordered it and there was no sin, there was no fall or corruption.
You're asking about the firmament and separation. I mean, look, there are people that agree, that say that there was a, if you want to say bubble around the earth and they try to say there's a water bubble, you said crystalline.
I mean, there's people that say that all over the place. And the thing is, is you're dealing with a one sentence that we don't know about because we weren't there. Okay. This is pre-flood geology, pre-flood creationism and what God did in his creative work before the flood.
And you're asking for anyone to be able to give an exact definition. What I can tell you is what scripture says. And then what I can say is you're saying that it's impossible. It can't happen. It can't, there's no way it's impossible.
My argument with that would be you're dealing with the God that created everything in the universe in six 24 hour days. He created everything perfectly. And then we're trying to come back from our perspective today to say, see, he couldn't have done that.
And then we're saying, well, science says, science says. I mean, if you want to look out into the space and look at all the quasars and all the different stars and look at all the structure, there are many things that science says is happening now that couldn't.
Possibly happen. All right. Let me do this, Justin. And this may be something, Michael, there used to be a theory called the canopy theory that many Christians would hold to. It has been proven mathematically that that can't work.
And that may be what you are thinking when you're saying that, you know, the firmament, because there were some people that used to put forth this hypothesis that there was a canopy of water vapor that covered the earth in a greenhouse type case.
And, you know, I'm going to let Anthony, you've studied this one a little bit more than I have with the canopy theory, what's wrong with it and what are the views that people would hold. And so this may actually answer some of the questions that you.
Did have. Now, see, this is a hard question to answer, right? Because the reality is what Justin just said is the thing we have to understand. We are living in a post-flood world. The world was different.
So while scientific law would have been the same before, after, what wouldn't be the same is the conditions of the earth and conditions of the entire universe or flood after flood. So trying to reconstruct this is a very difficult thing.
Number two, there has been a lot of bad teaching out there about canopy theory. And it would take me an hour to go through all the different types that are out there. That's really not so important. As much as it is, what does the word say?
So starting with the Bible, the separate, the firmament above to the firmament below, this is literally water above and water below. Exactly. We don't know exactly the entire context of it. So we have theories.
We have theories that the pre-flood world was very rich in oxygen compared to today, which is why we would have seen life be able to last longer than it does today, especially in the humans. But there's a whole host of things we can think about.
Here's the thing. And this is kind of where I want to go in terms of our direction. If we're going to talk a little bit about science here, we would come at this, Michael, from the perspective that there is one eyewitness, right?
Because if we're trying to construct something that happened in the past, something historical, this is evolution from an atheist perspective or creation for ours.
I mean, to be fair, I don't think it's fair to say atheism is evolution. While it probably is fair to say that most people, like 93 of the National Academy of Science, affirm the theory of evolution, it's probably not fair to say atheistic evolutionists, right?
Because atheism is an.
Answer to a single question. Yeah, I get it. The problem, though, is that when we understand atheism, we have to look at origins, right? And the only option in origins has to be evolution, Big Bang, to some degree, right?
I mean, that's the only option.
Nothing about the Big Bang says nothing about evolution. Evolution only happens when life is.
Already there. Yeah, okay. Nothing about the Big Bang. So here's the problem. In the discussion last week with the other guy, and we wish we could have brought Jian, but we had the show for him last week for the first hour or so.
This is the issue. Scientists do always want to start with a single cell. There's a reason for that. Because the idea of non-life turning into life goes against all scientific law. Scientific law that they know exists.
They don't want to acknowledge that. They don't want to acknowledge origins. But the problem is that for them to believe in evolution, they have to have a starting point. They can't just say, well, there's a cell, and then all of a sudden we can look at the possibilities of evolution from there.
No, we have to account for that cell all the way from its beginning to the material beginning of the universe, as well as the entire chain reaction of events that would have occurred from how that material got there in the beginning, whatever bang supposedly happened, all of the billions of years that would have occurred for the earth to finally form, and then for the parts to come together, and then for the cell to come about.
We're missing half the history, according to evolutionists. Yeah. But before we get off into that, there's something I want to make abundantly clear for all of us here. A lot of people hold science in high regard.
And look, I'm a dentist by trade. I was a math and chemistry double major in school. I took quantum. I took all kinds of great stuff in terms of classes. I love science. Here's the problem. We have learned about opioids.
I'm assuming you've taken opioids before, right? You got sick, you got hurt, and you may have taken.
Some Vicodin, some Percocet at some point. Hadra? Yeah, actually, I did take—I did have—exactly, you said I had an injury, and I was prescribed Percocet, and I took one, and I was like seeing flying horses.
I took one, and I'm like, yeah, I'll stick with Tylenol.
Yeah. Some people do. Some people do. Flying horse.
I remember that. But so, I bring this up because if you look at the scientific literature, you will read all about the science on how opioids work, right? And so, you'll see something called a mu receptor.
And it'll talk—you'll have pages and pages and pages about mu receptors. And then you start to dig into the research. Guess what you find? You have no clue what a mu receptor is. We honestly have no clue how an opioid even works.
You know, our body makes opioids thousands of times more potent than anything we can get from a drugstore, and we don't know how it works. This is the case with nearly all of our medications. Science, while I love science, it explains so very little.
Most of it is what we as fallible human beings have had to kind of put into the missing pieces. And so, I bring this up because there's a whole host of things that are missing in our understanding of how a simple drug we take makes pain go away.
We all acknowledge it makes pain go away. No problems with that. It works. It works for me. But we don't know how it works. And so, this is my whole point about science, is even if we grant you a human-grant evolution to start with a single cell, all we have is billions of bones and complex organisms all over the earth, and that's it.
And we have scientists who have attempted to literally fill in the missing pieces of the of which it is way more than 99 .999 of what we would need to know to be able to verify evolution. That's a huge problem.
So, when we're talking about science, I just want to make sure for our listeners, we understand what science does and what its.
Severe limitations are. Before you answer, Michael, let me just ask you a question. This is more of a technical thing. We're getting some feedback, and I don't know if it's because you don't have headphones on.
I don't know if we are. Maybe if not, who's ever not speaking should probably mute. I know when Anthony was talking, we were getting it earlier just when two people were talking, but I know that I saw in the chat some other people had heard some cutting out.
So, if you have headphones that you could put in our earbuds, that'd be good. If not, we'll just try to mute when we're not.
Um, I can grab them if need be. Otherwise, I will mute when I'm not speaking.
Yeah, okay. Go for it. Go ahead and answer, Anthony, and then I had some follow-up question.
Okay. So, you said a lot there, and I want to go back a little bit because it's really interesting. So, again, atheism, I want to restate atheism in answer to a single question. You talked about the Big Bang there, and then you talked about evolution, and it's really important that we get a distinction between those things.
So, the Big Bang, which is a term that gets tossed out a lot from what I've read, it's actually more we're talking about the inflation of space-time. Sean Carroll, who's a physicist, has actually hypothesized now that the universe may not have actually had a quote-unquote beginning, that it may have always been around, and part of the hypothesis is we know that supermassive gravity can affect space-time, so much so that one second can equal infinity when t equals zero.
So, we don't actually, but we're still learning about all that stuff, and again, I'm not a scientist. I only play one on TV. So, I just want to be clear about that. When we're talking about evolution, though, you kind of toss in evolution going from a single cell to all these other things to the start of it, which is different, which is abiogenesis, and you said something a minute ago that I want to commend you for.
When you were talking about something, you said, we don't know, I don't know, and I think that sometimes that's the most honest thing we can say, that we don't know something, and so how did chemistry become biology?
I don't think we know. I certainly don't know how chemistry became biology. My lack of intelligence in that area or the ability to explain it to you certainly isn't evidence for creation. It's just evidence of my lack of understanding, but there's nothing wrong with not knowing the answer to a question.
You said, well, you know, where did all this stuff come from, and what I find really interesting, and I don't necessarily want this to become too argumentative, but you think that there's this thing that's always been there that just poofed it into existence, and I find this a lot when I speak to Christians.
They say, well, you think that everything just popped into existence? I'm like, well, so do you, and I'm not trying to do a two-quote or anything like that, but I'm saying you are just as guilty of saying there's this thing that's there, and it made everything, versus me saying I don't know how it got there, but now it is, and when you talk before about things that science and evolution doesn't know the answers to, well, no, we don't, but we certainly know more than we did in 1859 when On the Origin of Species was published, and we're finding out now that there are more questions, but we know more than we did, but because there's so much more to know, we know less about more, but our knowledge is growing, and in order for, I think, what you said to really be a thing, we have, because it's not just biology, right?
We have biology, chemistry, geology, all these are the different disciplines, all converging on the same conclusion, contrary to your beliefs.
So, let's work through this for a bit, and yeah, I'm not surprised that you see things contrary to our beliefs, because we've had, since Dewey, a whole lot of people that are basically saying the Christian belief can't be taught.
You were mentioning how many scientists accept evolution. Well, if you believe in creationism, it's hard to get a job in the scientific field, unless you're working for a Christian organization. So, but let's work with what you had said with the creation of the universe.
There's really only three possibilities.
Well, I'd like to just correct you just on one thing there, not to correct, but to offer as a point of contention to it. There are lots of believers who have pretty high-profile jobs in science, like Francis Collins, like an absolutely brilliant man.
Yeah. And I'm happy to believe, you know, this is kind of the same thing you do.
Yeah. But the point being is that, you know, there is a bias that is out there. And so, we cannot ignore the fact that if there's a bias, that that's going to affect it. But we can break this down scientifically and logically to answer the question.
There's three possibilities. Let's start with what you brought up, that the universe might have always existed. Well, the first law of thermodynamics, which is, it's not a theory, it's a law, proves that that can't be true.
The matter and energy would have had a beginning. Okay. This is something that Einstein was able to prove out. So, the universe could not have always existed. And this is the reason for the idea of a Big Bang, a singularity that had so so much energy that it exploded.
And that explains the expansion of the universe. So, the universe always existing, first law of thermodynamics would prove that's not the case. Well, the second would be, could the universe have created itself?
And that then we go to logic, that would violate the laws of logic, because the universe would have to first exist to be able to create itself. And so, it cannot be its own generation. It needed the last option, the only option left, someone or something created the universe.
You're right, Michael, when you say that we would say that the universe popped into existence. That is true. The difference is, we have the only one that is based in science and logic. Sorry, I'm sorry, finish off.
Yeah. So, when we say this, it's not, there's many that try to pit like, well, you have to believe in science or the Bible. And that's not the case. That's not true. You can believe in both. But your authority, the only authority is got to be the, because when we look at the creation of universe, there's only one scientific record for it, right?
We do science. You have to be able to observe, you have to be able to create. So, you have a scenario, you have to create the experiment, you have to observe it, right? You document it. Well, that's what we have in Genesis.
We have the creation of the universe. It was observed by the creator of the universe. It was documented by the creator of the universe. That's the only scientific record that we can have for it because it's the only one that, of someone that was there.
Anything else that we do is philosophy. It's not science. Okay. So, go ahead. I know you wanted.
To respond. It's interesting. So, when you're talking about, you know, the universe can come from nothing, that's certainly not my idea. I would, if you don't agree with that, then I would suggest you take it up with physicists like John Carroll.
There's also, have you read, I know he's kind of a hot button issue right now for other reasons, but whatever he's done certainly doesn't delegitimize his science, but there's a little guy named Lawrence Krauss.
Who wrote a book, A Universe from Nothing. Why do you have to insult his height, a little guy?
Because I've stood next to him as a little guy.
At the Atheist Rally four years ago.
I think he's about your height, Anthony. You wouldn't call him a little guy, but the rest of us would. Shoulder in the pictures.
He's, yeah, I've met him. He's been on the podcast. We've sat and had lunch together. And he admits that his title, A Universe from Nothing, is very much tongue in cheek. We don't have an example of nothing.
We have no idea what nothing even is.
And so it's... Actually, because we do know what nothing is.
Well, no, if you have an actual demonstration of nothing, you're going to be famous really fast.
Nothing is what rocks dream of.
Well, that's an interesting point, but I mean, that doesn't even...
Nothing is nothing. They lack consciousness. Yeah, nothing is nothing. It's not something. And that's the thing when you read Richard Dawkins. You know, he was trying to make the case for gravity as what is, you know, in its role in the creation universe.
And, you know, when he would say that nothing isn't nothing, it's actually something.
Well, then it's not nothing. I don't listen to Richard Dawkins when it comes to cosmology. He's a biologist. Huh? I wouldn't listen to Richard Dawkins when it comes to cosmology. He's a biologist.
Richard Dawkins is a biologist. Well, actually, Richard Dawkins is a zoologist, but Stephen Hawking is a physicist. He was, yeah.
Well, your Lawrence Krauss actually debated and argued about nothing being something. And in one of his discussions, he actually talked about the very fact that nothing is something. He did say that. Yep, he did.
Well, so I mean, a minute ago, you said that all the sciences have converged together, and now you're trying to separate them out. I'm not trying to attack. Trust me, I'm not. No, no, it's fine. You're trying to converge the sciences in a moment and then now separate them out saying, well, this one I wouldn't trust him.
That one I would believe him.
No, I just want to be clear. So what I said was his title, a universe from nothing.
Well, what is nothing? I mean, nothing is the absolute void of anything. It's the nothingness. Nothing means no thing. There is not concept, not thought, not energy, not mass, not matter. There is no thing inside of this vast nothing.
And the problem with it is, at the very beginning of this, you said that you started from a point of creation. You had a problem with Genesis. You have a problem with the point of creation. Now, you have two choices, and you've went to the other choice and the atheistic choice, and I think what Anthony was trying to explain is the atheistic choice is no God, therefore something outside of God had to have been the creator.
And whether you say Big Bang or whatever you want to call it, your argument has to be not just anti-theism, because I mean, admit it, we're now past the point of I just don't believe or know if God exists to there is no God.
There is no gods. I mean, that's what you said.
Also, we've tossed a couple different things in there. I do sometimes identify as an anti-theist, but I'll get to that in a second. That's fine. So like I said, Lawrence Krauss, in his title, a universe from nothing, he told me, he said, I named it that way, pretty much tongue in cheek.
He said, you can take a point in space, and you can zero in on a point in space with a telescope, where there is nothing, where there are no stars, stuff like that. He said, there's all kinds of stuff there.
Then that's not nothing. Exactly. And that's what he said. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's what he's talking about. But again, I don't want to
No, that's not what he's talking about. Let him finish, because
Okay. But what I'm saying is that when it comes to that kind of stuff, I leave it to the scientists to argue these types of points, because that's not what I am. I look at the different arguments. And then what you guys said was, do you try to apply, does this make sense to you?
And I try to apply it from my perspective and say, well, does it make sense to me? But you were applying logic. The other thing that you said was, is that I start from this no god perspective. No, I didn't start to, I didn't even get to a no god perspective.
I have become convinced that a god does not exist. If you have the capacity to convince me that a god exists, I will have no choice but to accept it, because I will have become convinced. I didn't reach this out of a, I don't accept sin, because I think that's just made up.
I didn't just decide, oh, I don't like this stuff, so I'm going to turn away from it. It is not something that I have presently, in the light of everything else that's available, have the capacity to believe.
But I am open to being convinced.
Okay, so here'd be the thing. You say you're open to being convinced. Yes. Do you think you have an evidence problem or a spiritual problem? I don't, well, what do you mean by spirit? Well, the immaterial part of you.
I don't think there's an immaterial part of me.
Okay, so you don't believe in the immaterial?
No, I said I don't think there's an immaterial part of me. Okay. So, I believe that everything that I am, so everything that is Michael, will cease to be when this carcass dies.
Okay, so, and I'm just going to ask a couple questions, just for clarity, to understand. So, you believe that we are purely chemical reactions, would that be fair?
Purely chemical, do I believe that I'm purely chemical reactions?
Because we're made up of chemicals, we're only physical, and therefore, there's no immaterial part of us. We do what we do because we're a bag of chemicals, right? It's the chemicals reacting within us.
I agree with that. Okay. I'm going to go a little bit off tangent for a bit, just to understand. So, do you believe, do you accept people who are transgendered? In other words, someone is a born, say, biologically male, and they identify, though, as a female?
Do I, what do you mean by do I accept it? Do I think that it's a possibility? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm certainly no one to judge them. Identify how you want, I don't care how you identify.
Okay. So, here'd be a thing. If we're a bag of chemical reactions, we are going to react to our chemicals. If someone is born biologically male, their chemicals are male. They're going to act male, they're going to think male, they're going to be male.
How could they identify as anything other than male without an immaterial part of them that is working contrary to the biology of their maleness? That right there is something that has to be outside of just chemical reactions, because they're identifying different than their biology.
Okay. So, again, the bit that I do, I'm not going to try to pass myself off as an expert, but, so, I have male and female hormones running through my body. I just have a dominance of male hormones. And it's the same with all of us.
If we look at anatomy, male testicles are just ovaries that grew outside the body. I have, as a male, I have mammary glands. These are just biological facts. And so, sometimes, nature doesn't get it right.
Okay. So, you said they're biological facts.
Like, do you accept that you have mammary glands?
Well, I'm going to challenge you to show me that, as you said, testicles are ovaries, just outside.
You can look it up in the book Grey's Anatomy. Like, it's pretty simple.
No, they're not. Because ovaries produce eggs, testicles produce sperm. They're not the same. They may have started from the same clump of cells. And they evolved differently. Not evolved. They were pre-programmed to make themselves into different things.
And see, this is the issue that Andrew was just getting to a few moments ago, is this issue of immaterial versus the material. So, you live in a materialistic worldview, right? You believe that you're nothing more than just the random chance process of random chemical reactions over billions of years, right?
I mean, that's essentially who you are.
That's a pretty big oversimplification, but okay. For the sake of argument, sure.
Is it any more complex than that? I mean, you've got laws of chemistry, laws of physics, and random chemical reactions that started in pond scum or dirt, the first cell comes about. And then since then, you have more random chemical reactions doing nothing but obeying laws of chemistry and physics, right?
I mean, how much more is it to.
That? I said I'll grant you for the sake of argument. What's your point?
Okay. So, my point is this, is that if you were just here as a bag of random chemical reactions, doing nothing but obeying laws of chemistry and physics, are you controlling your conversation.
Right now? Are you talking with us? Yeah. I'm not a solipsist. I accept.
That there are external minds and stuff, yeah. Yeah, right. I mean, and I would agree. We're having a real conversation. You are having real thoughts, logical thoughts in your mind. You're processing thoughts.
You're processing what you're about to say and you say it. And here's the problem is that's all immaterial stuff. That doesn't result from a materialistic worldview. It can't be accounted for in a materialistic worldview, but it gets even better.
Is this issue of information? Information requires intelligence to produce it and to interpret it. And so, when we look at, and it would take a while to unpack all of this, but the reason why that clump of cells either became testicles or became ovaries is because of the information that was programmed into the cells.
And because of other information in other cells that was pre-programmed, different hormones caused that clump of cells to either form into ovaries or form into testicles. This is the way biological systems work, but it is all based off of this immaterial information that had been put there by somebody who is far superior to that cell.
That is somebody who has the ability to program and has the ability to have knowledge to begin.
With in order for all of that to come about. So, how did you determine that whatever cause? So, whenever it comes to this, I love Kalam. I love the Kalam argument. It's a lot of fun because I have no problem granting it.
Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Life began to exist. The universe life had to have a cause. I grant it all. How did you determine that cause wasn't natural?
So, let me put it this way. Well, it would be impossible for it to be natural because it created nature. So, it has to be, whatever caused it has to be by definition outside of nature. Exactly. Okay. So, let's work through slowly then.
You have a beginning of nature, right? Of the natural world.
Everything that exists is natural regardless of its state. We don't know. So, if we take it back as far as we can go, we eventually, we arrive, we the royal we, arrive at a point where we say, something happened.
What happened? I don't know. You insert God. I stay personally with I don't know. If you're searching to know, that's the claim that needs to be backed up.
Well, here's the thing. You actually don't. You actually insert science. You claim we have a science, a God of the gaps, but you have a science of the gaps. Every time you're trying to shove science in to answer things, but then you back away when science doesn't have the answers.
But, what I'm trying to deal with is, what we know is the natural world, if it had a beginning, right? The natural world has a beginning. If it had a beginning. So, if it had a beginning, as you said you were willing to grant, then it had a creator that has to by definition be outside of nature if nature had the beginning.
If nature was created by something, whatever created it by definition has to be outside of it. That's what I don't grant. Okay. So, you believe that something can create itself. No, what I said was, I don't know.
Okay. So, let me ask this. I mean, can something create itself?
I will actually, we know that I was reading something about this not too long ago. A guy, I'm sure you're familiar with a guy named Aron Ra. He runs this thing called the Phylogeny Explorer Project and he was talking about the RNA world hypothesis and how RNA actually has the capacity to spontaneously generate.
So, where there was an RNA, now there is RNA. And this is just something I read very recently. So, I wouldn't hold that up as gospel, but that's one example.
Okay. Logically, it's impossible because for something to create itself, it has to first exist. So, where did God come from? God always existed. He didn't have a beginning.
Oh, so, I'm sorry, but that's classic special pleading. No, it is. Everything needs a creator except this one thing.
No, it's not special pleading because we need...
Nature needs a creator, but God always existed.
Let's be clear with our terms. God is not nature. So, he didn't have a beginning.
So, he didn't need a cause. Explain how that's not special pleading.
Because you're arguing it's special pleading because you're saying that God is within nature. No. It's a violation of the law of identity, okay? And law is logic. You first have to define God properly.
You can't say that everything in nature has a beginning. Therefore, God had a beginning because God is not nature. He's not in the natural world.
Actually, within Kalam, I didn't say I said everything that begins to exist has a cause. That's what I said.
Did God have a beginning? No.
I don't think that it exists. But what I'm saying is that you're saying that everything, because of the complexity, all this other stuff, it had to have a creator. It couldn't come from nothing. And then you're saying, here's this God that has just always been.
That is special pleading. Now, I understand that you're going to define it differently. And from my perspective, you have to define it differently because it has to fit within what you already accept.
Because you hold the Bible as your ultimate authority, you have to start with that.
No, actually, you have it backwards. See, you're the one giving the different definition because you're the one, I would say, has to do that because it's the only way you can say it's special pleading.
The God that we're speaking of, the God that you claim doesn't exist, okay, is the God that is self-existent and has not had a beginning. That is clear in the scriptures. God never had a beginning, and he doesn't have an end.
He is eternal. And therefore, as you gave the definition for the Kalam argument, everything that had a beginning, God's not included in that because he didn't have a beginning. So it's not me trying to fit something in.
It's me using the proper definitions, okay? If you can show in scripture where God says he had a beginning, that would be different. But the scripture is quite clear in many passages that he was from everlasting to everlasting, that he had no beginning, okay?
Yeah, and it's hard because, and I don't, and I want to preface what I'm about to say by saying I don't mean any disrespect in what I'm about to say. That's fine. But there could not be a less reliable book than the Bible because the same book that says from everlasting to everlasting also says stuff like a donkey spoke, and people walked around a wall and blew horns at it, and it fell over, and all, and a dead Jew came back to life.
So all of these other things. So, you know, I understand that you hold it as your ultimate authority, and I cannot do that because of the claims that it makes.
Okay, so Michael, here's the thing. Let's look at this. You're, the reason you have difficulty with that is because you ignore the supernatural, which you ignore the immaterial part of us. You ignore the things that are, you can't, you, I mean, you argue that there's not an immaterial part of us, but if there's no immaterial part of you, then you have no ability to reason.
You can't explain laws of logic, you can't explain truth, knowledge, all these things are immaterial, okay?
Because here we are having a logical conversation, and, and all of those things are not evidently true. You can, you can claim that all these things exist, but do you have the capacity to demonstrate the supernatural exists?
Okay, so, so I want, I want folks to know what you did. I talked about the immaterial, and you went to the supernatural.
Do you have the capacity to demonstrate that?
Sure, just several things that cannot be. So let's, let's look at the laws of logic, okay? The laws of logic, how do, how are they, if, if there's no immaterial part of us, how do we know the laws of logic?
Well, the laws of logic are descriptive, right? They describe reality. They're not descriptive. So how do they come about? Oh, I don't know. I don't, I personally don't know. I think we, I think we discovered them, okay?
And maybe that's the wrong word to use. I think, I think we may, maybe, maybe discovered, maybe it's the right word. I'm certainly not mastered in philosophy, so I feel like I'm stumbling over things, but, you know, they, the laws of logic describe the world around us.
How they came about, I, I don't know.
Yeah, and I, I, you know, for folks who, who may be listening, watching, you know, let's, let's understand that this, we're trying not to have a three-on-one ganging on, you know, we do have three hosts here, you know, I, I think we're trying to be fair with you and, and make sure you, you know, you have opportunities to speak and, and expression.
I don't feel I'm being treated unfairly at all. Yeah. There's a little, there's a little leave studio button here. I can just leave if I felt that. I honestly don't feel that way.
So, but, but I want, I want folks to, to, to know, you know, that you're, you're, I believe being honest and, and people need to be fair with each other. You're saying, you know, I don't think anyone should jump on you if you, and you're trying to, to word things that, well, I don't know if I don't want you cause you're trying to be precise.
And I recognize that and I appreciate that. And I think there's a lot of people that might want to jump on you if you're not exactly precise in something in an area you haven't studied. And so I think that we, you know, part of the show, Michael, you may not, you know, I know you came in twice and, you know, you're not a regular viewer or listener.
And, you know, what we try to do is we try to teach the apologetics. It's not just, we want to train people on how to go about having discussions like this. So I'm pointing things out. So people who are watching would also pick up that, you know what, there's times that you have to, you have to, even if someone says something, that's not technically correct, don't harp on it if it's not an area of expertise.
So when we look at the laws of logic and you're saying we discovered them, so you would say they.
Existed before humans? And that's what, and that's when I, why I stopped myself when I said discovered because I'm not a hundred percent sure. Like I said, like the, you know, something is what it is, you know, a law of identity.
It describes reality. So I think it's most fair to say, I don't know where they came from. They may be human derived.
Okay. So I'll give you an argument of why they, they would not be able to be human derived. Uh, you and I both agree there was a time before human beings, right? You might think millions of years or billions of years, I would say days, but we both agree there was a time before humans.
Fair enough. Before. Before the human mind. Yeah. Yeah, sure. There's, there's a long time before homo sapiens. Okay. So could, before there was a human being, could the universe have existed and not existed in the same way at the same time?
Now, this is the second law of, of logic. Okay. It's all of non-contradiction. You can't have any and not a, at the same time, in the same way universe have existed and not existed at the same,.
In the same manner at the same time before human beings. I don't think so. No. Okay.
So then therefore that law couldn't have been created by human beings. It existed before there.
Were human beings, didn't it? Sure. But, but it would have also described how things are, right? Because, because the universe couldn't have existed and non-existent at the same time.
It's also descriptive of reality. Okay. So, so the laws of logic or something that are.
Not a chemical reaction, that they are true, right? You mean like universally true in all times, all places, stuff like that? To the best of my knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I would end.
Up saying that these are things that are immaterial. Now, let me actually, hang on,.
Let me correct, correct that right there. Cause I remember something that I read. Because I think there are times when it, that's actually not the case because for example, I was, I remember reading about electrons, the fact that electrons actually, they exist in two places at the same time.
I think you mean courts. Oh, maybe. Yeah. You might be right. Yeah. So yeah. So, so I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I accepted for the sake of discussion. Yeah. And, and even with that,.
You know, this gets into, I mean, and Einstein had big issues with, with this, but you know, the, the whole idea of when we get to subatomic, it, it, it appears, and that's how I'm going to word it. It appears that we can have a court that disappears and then reappear somewhere else.
But it is more likely that we don't have the technology yet to be able to examine this, to know what's actually happening. And that's why we have to say, we don't know what happened, but it's assumed it's, it's the appearance that it disappears and reappears.
Is it the same? This, is it the exact same object or did it go out of existence and pop in a new one popped into existence or did it move so fast that we can't see it because we don't have technology that could show it.
So those are things that we would, we don't know enough about yet. And, you know, when, you know, you have things that we don't, we just, we examine, we don't know to then make conclusions. Well, this can happen.
I would say that would be, you know, not a very rational decision, right? If, if we say we don't know, but we could take what we don't know and know what it isn't or know what it is. You can't, if you don't, you know, if you don't know whether it's actually popping out of existence and popping into existence, how could you say that?
Yes, you can have contradictions based on that. And, and that becomes the issue when I, I, I'm familiar with the argument, but you, we have to be careful not to say, well, just because I don't know something I know, cause this is going to be something I want to, I'm going to get to maybe later with you.
The question I had is how could you know that the Christian God doesn't exist? So I'm going to end up asking that one later. Cause I want to make sure I get to that. Cause it was on, you said in the beginning of the show, and it's, it's one of the two questions I really wanted to ask.
But, you know, as we, as we work through these things we have an ability to reason, we have morality, we have truth, we have knowledge, all these things are immaterial. I would say they can't come about other than from an immaterial source.
Now, the only option I believe that you'd have would be to say that all these things are products of our brain,.
Of the chemicals in our brain, things like this. Well, you touched there just on morality. You said, you know, these things are immaterial. And morality is, at least from, in my opinion, is evidently an emergent property that, that, that we developed.
And I go back and forth, let people say, you know, are you a, you know, are you a subjectivist or an objectivist? Um, I think that there are, I think, I'm sorry, morality is a whole big ball, but big ball of wax.
I don't want to settle into that. But anyway, sorry, you were saying.
No, there's, but the thing is, is, I mean, maybe you've done this in school. Have you ever take the experiment where you're going to take a baking soda and you add vinegar to it? Yeah, it's fun. And what is that?
What's the reaction? Yeah. Is that, is that morally right or wrong? I would say that's amoral. Okay. It's, it's, it doesn't produce morals, right? I don't think so. Yeah. And that's the thing. Chemical reactions can't produce morality.
It would be the argument.
I think, I think that's a, I think that's a, again, a big oversimplification because I think when it's, when you talk about morality, I don't necessarily want to get down this road because I definitely want to answer the question with the Christian God.
As an emergent property, I think the first thing you have to do is you have to, you have to establish a goal. And for me, it's, it's, it's wellbeing. The, the reduction or the greatest possible reduction of harm and suffering and the involuntary imposition on conscious creatures.
And at the same time, the promotion of flourishing. And that's, those are complex. That's much more complex than mixing baking soda and vinegar. But there's still the result of chemical reactions within our brains.
So how would you define that chemical reaction? If I, if I could ask you this question real quick, how would you define and know what that chemical reaction is? If it's merely the, the, the, the product of the, the, the, the, the working of material in your mind, reacting to the stimulus that you see outside of you, how could you know whether or not your.
Reactions are accurate or true? Well, like I said, first of all, it's not just my reactions. Like as, and again, this is, this is going to be drawing on a lot of things that, that I accept that you won't accept.
Right. But you know, as, as Homo sapiens, you know, as, as our, as we, as animals evolved and became more sedentary and less nomadic and started to group together as, as individuals and realize that, you know, the, the, all the, the herds of animals, they end up coming back to the same place every year.
We don't have to follow them around all the time anymore. And we started grouping together in, in communities. Then it wasn't just, it's not just one person's chemical reactions. It's how they interact with other people.
And then they have to establish, you know, a basis of this, this wellbeing. And then, and then it emerges from that. So it's not just, and I don't want to be too accusatory, but it, but it's, I think it's a little bit of an oversimplification of trying to say, well, if it's just this it, I don't think.
That's necessary. Well, here, here's the thing. I mean, you just gave a scenario for, for morals. There was all assumption. It's all assumption that, that, that, you know, humans, real, as we gathered together and we saw animals were coming around the same that they gather and they build morals.
The reality is what we end up seeing is when you try to argue for human flourishing, who gets to define what human flourishing is? Because Adolf Hitler defined human flourishing as advancing the evolution by killing off anyone that was less human and creating a superior race of human beings.
And that would be better for the human race. That was, that was human flourishing.
In his definition. Was he wrong? Yeah. And yeah, because sometimes we get it wrong.
But you see, when you, when human flourishing is the, the, whenever you try to do morality without an absolute universal standard, you, you can't argue for human flourishing or any morality because morality requires an absolute universal standard.
Is your standard. If wellbeing is your standard, then the elimination of an entire populace of people based on their race goes against wellbeing. For who? Yeah. For who? People in general.
Like, no, no, no, not, not for Adolf Hitler and his friends. Yeah. It was fine for them.
I said for people in general, if we start, if we start from wellbeing, okay. And the promotion of flourishing, the reduction of harm and things like that, then, then we can say, and I would go as far as to say from an objective standard that, that the, that the extinct, that the extermination of those people was wrong because it decreased their wellbeing and I can get it without a God.
But it increased the wellbeing of the others who are still alive. Yeah. And that's why I said sometimes people get it wrong. So is abortion wrong? It depends on the context. I am, and while we're jumping.
Down a bunch of different rabbit holes here. I'm not, I'm not trying to rabbit hole.
No, I'm not. I'm saying where it's, it's a bunch of different topics. I meant to say rabbit holes the wrong thing. Okay. It's a bunch of different topics. My, my personal thought is, and I know this is going to probably produce a turmoil in your live chat.
I am pro-life.
I believe that life is precious. What's that Anthony? I didn't hear what you said.
Somebody just asked about abortion. If he, somebody said, Don Jacks just said he should.
Be pro-life then. And like literally a minute ago. Well, you're being consistent in that point. So.
Thank you very much. Yeah. So, so I believe life is precious and life should be protected. Now here's the turmoil part. My pro-life stance is only prompted by, trumped by my pro-choice stance. And that is that bodily autonomy.
It is my opinion that bodily autonomy has to win out. Now I do not, I think that the use of just as a, as a, as a, just to kind of lump the whole abortion thing into one piece of pie. People who, anyone who would use abortion as a form of birth control, I think that's a point.
I think that's disgusting. However, there are situations where, and one of the, one of the analogies I've used, because I've talked to lots of people about this, people say, well, you know, incest and rape is only about 1%.
And that, and that's, that's fine. I think it was Ben Shapiro who said, okay, fine. We'll give you the 1%, but we'll make the rest illegal. But, you know, if let's say you have two consenting adults, right.
And they decided to get together and the man wears a condom and the woman's on the pill, but the condom breaks and somehow the woman gets pregnant. That's pretty unlikely, but let's say it happens. Neither one of them wanted to have a, to have a child.
Okay. I think that that woman should have the freedom to make that choice. And I don't think that anyone other than her and her healthcare professional.
Should have any say. Okay. Let me ask this. Cause I want to see if you're, I want to see consistency of this. Do you believe there should be a limit on age for alcohol, cigarettes? Should people be allowed to kill themselves?
I'm sorry. Are you saying that because alcohol and cigarettes contribute to death? Is that what.
You mean? No, no. I just want to know if, do you believe that, that we should have laws preventing people from a certain age to be able to smoke cigarettes, to be able to drink alcohol, either one of those, and then a separate one, do you believe that there should be laws preventing.
People from killing themselves? Okay. So as someone whose mother died from lung cancer and who has never smoked a day in his life, I've never, I've never even had a cigarette in my mouth. Um, I would be okay with, with smoking being completely illegal.
Um, that wouldn't bother me at all. Should there be a regulation? Yes. And there is in fact, in Canada, people get around it, but it's a pretty, uh, they've got some pretty good safeguards in place. Yes.
There should absolutely be restrictions as far as alcohol. Yes. There should absolutely be restrictions on alcohol. Um, because, uh, of all the addictions, uh, possibilities and lots of other things. Okay.
Should people have the right to end their own life? Um, I think that that's a really tricky, uh, that's a really tricky, tricky, tricky topic. Person. I personally think that if someone has the right to live, I think they also have the right to not live.
Now, having said that, and, and being married to someone who has a career in the mental health field, um, I think there, there's a, there's a ton of caveats that have to be put in place. Um, I think that, uh, for someone who's perhaps, uh, has stage four, uh, cancer or something like that, like with, with my mother, like not to put too much of a personal spin on it, but my mother, when she was diagnosed with cancer, it was stage four and she chose to forego any type of treatment.
She was done. Uh, that was for different reasons. My father had already died and she had lost the will to live. So that's a different, a little bit different story, but she, she chose, she actively chose to not have, uh, treatment.
Um, so I'm not a hundred.
Percent sure that I would put that in a little bit of a different category because she didn't choose to, she didn't give herself cancer. So it's, uh, you know, uh, but so I just, I want to point out an inconsistency though, that you have, because you say that when it comes to abortion, someone should have complete and utter autonomy over their life, even though they're killing another human being, but there should be an absolute age restriction on their.
Own autonomy to drink or smoke cigarettes. So you're killing a potential human being, over almost 25 years of all recognized pregnancies and then spontaneous abortion. So Sam Harris, um, God is the most prolific abortionist of all.
Yeah. Except for the fact that the, yeah, there are many that die in the womb. Uh, that is it's amazing how, you know, Sam Harris wants to blame God for that and not credit God for anything else. So it, it, it shows that there, his real issue is he hates God.
But the, the thing though is, is that I wanted to point out that you're not consistent with that argument. Um, but the, the thing that we end up seeing is yes, it is a life, uh, it is different.
DNA can have a different gender. Okay. Well, I want to be clear, the termination of a pregnancy, you cannot reasonably argue that it is not the termination of a life. I would never argue that it is absolutely the termination of a life.
Cause you said it from the case, from the case of bodily autonomy, it is not the ending of an autonomous life. So for example, I also think that there should be limits on, on abortion. I don't think that you should be able to just willy nilly decide whatever period, you know, pick a period of time into a pregnancy and say, yeah, I've decided I don't want this.
I don't think that would happen a lot anyway, but there should be restrictions. But I mean, if, I mean, if we're talking about, you know, like, like I said before about a broken condom or something like that, then, you know, like a, you know, a day after pill or oops, you know, I missed my cycle.
It turns out I'm actually, you know, three weeks, four weeks, whatever it is, pregnant, that that's a, that's a potential human life, but it is certainly not an autonomous life. And I think there's a distinction that has to be made there.
Yeah, go ahead, Justin. I'm sorry. One thing I was going to ask on this, or I just want to say that what I'm hearing is that you're not, you're not speaking and thinking in a subjective mindset. When you're talking objectively, you're, you're using an objective standard and you're trying to say this is an objective standard.
And the problem that I'm seeing here is you're not using the chemical standard. And here's what I mean by this. You've said multiple times that you don't believe in the supernatural or that you don't believe in the, the, the concept of, you know, that which is outside of the natural realm, that we are a random chance chemical reactions.
So if your mind is making subjective statements and your mind is trying to determine the good or the bad or this or that, you are foregoing this random chance chemical reactions. And you're superseding that you had.
There are many, many psychologists and many great thinkers who have said, this is, this is where the atheistic argument or the evolutionary argument breaks down because you have to think outside of your own chemical reaction standard.
And let me see, see if I can make it clear for you. If you have a vat of baking soda and you took one piece of that baking soda out or one little, uh, one little, you know, a teaspoon of baking soda out and you put vinegar on top of it and it fizzed up and blew up.
If it blew up and reacted, do you think the rest of the bacon soda would have an opinion about it? No, you're having opinions about what baking soda should do. You see what I'm saying? You're having opinions and subjective thoughts about what baking soda should do with more baking soda.
And I mean, and I'm, I'm coming from your perspective on the random chance chemical reactions of a mind that is not under the will and submission of an all authoritative God. So is, is either, so the first question I'll ask you is, is either baking soda or vinegar conscious?
It would be as conscious as I think.
It's a fair, I think it's a fair question. Hold on, hold on. So consciousness is immaterial. So you've, you've just, when you say as a conscience, when you, when you're arguing that.
You've just given up your worldview. And that's what I'm saying. And that's what I'm saying. Is you're saying conscious, the definition is to be with knowledge. The mind is what the brain does.
And I, and I said clearly that once this, this physical brain dies, everything that's me will be gone. But that doesn't mean that consciousness doesn't exist. And I think the hard problem of consciousness is something that no one has actually solved.
I don't, I don't believe that's ever been solved because it can't be between. And I said, go back to, I think it was this oversimplification of what you keep saying. I'll say is that I'm pretty sure that it, I think it's, I think it's probably fair to say that I, that I stated as my opinion.
So, so yes, there is a degree of subjectivity to it.
But what I'm trying to point out is, is that a chemical reaction can't have an opinion about another chemical reaction. But I'm not just a chemical reaction. I have a conscience that was given to me by God.
That's your presupposition. No, that's the scripture. The scripture tells me.
That. And, and it would also be science because you, here's what you're doing. And what everyone has to do with your position is to say, we're talking about consciousness. We don't know where it comes from.
We just don't know. No, it can't come from God. Well, how do you know that? How could you know that it can't come from a source when you say you don't know where it comes from, but then you, you want to employ it?
Well, the, the, the issue if in the discussion is, if you're going to argue for consciousness and materialism, you have to prove that the conscious is material. And you can't do that. Why? Because it's impossible because it's immaterial.
You cannot use science, which is the study of the material world to prove the immaterial. And that's what you'd have to do with a conscience. And that's why it's impossible. So what I said.
Was, is that, is that the, the mind is what the brain does. Okay. And, and I'll, I'll ask and answer, um, the question that I asked, um, Justin, um, is in that, or I guess ask it, do you come to conclusions?
Absolutely. Okay. Does your brain produce chemical reactions? Well, sure. Okay. So then chemical, chemical reactions can produce conclusions.
Um, my feet produce smelly odors out of my feet, but that doesn't mean that my, my feet are.
Thinking, but there's a logical fallacy there. Yes, I agree. Go ahead. All right. Because, because you're taking two, two separate things and then saying that they're synonymous. All right.
So you first, that's not what I'm doing at all. It, my brain comes to conclusions. Okay. My brain has chemical reactions in it. Okay. Oh, it's just a chemical reaction. And, and I understand, I like you've said a few times, you know, you'll based on my worldview.
And I understand that based on your worldview, you, that's where you have to go because it has to be. I also, I also want to say that when I say that there can't be a God, while I'm convinced that Christian God does not exist.
I can't say, I would never say that it can't exist, but from my perspective and from what I've seen, read, researched, talked to other people and this like that, it doesn't evidently exist because if it evidently existed, then, then Romans one 20 would be right.
And we wouldn't be having this conversation. We're not afraid of doing the right thing at all, but I'm not going to do the right thing unless I know it's the right thing. Well, it says, I know also says.
That an ax had floated. Well, okay. Well, there's a couple of things I do want to get to. You, you, you've read the Bible a couple of times, right? And some more. I read it all the time. I read it all the time.
Okay. And what I see and let me, cause this is, I don't, we really, this first time we're ever really talking, we've had a couple of email exchanges, but have you read from authors and people that are defending Christianity, or do you, have you read as you've clearly named many people that would be attacking Christianity?
Have you read both sides.
Or have you only read the one? I try to read both sides. I think it's important to try to educate yourself on, on both sides. I'm, I just recently actually at the recommendation of Josh Bowen, who I mentioned before was just picked up.
I haven't read it yet. It's just over there. Paul Copan's book on, and also listed the stuff by William Lane Craig. I, I interact with at least as many believers as I do non-believers. Okay. It's actually probably, it's actually probably more on the, on the, on the believer side because I don't want, I'm not interested at all in being in an echo chamber.
Yeah. Well, that's good. Yeah. I mean,.
The reason I asked it, you, you made a statement earlier and I know we're going back a ways and we only have half an hour, but you said that the Bible is, you know, and I'm forgetting the exact way you worded it.
So you, if you remember it and you can correct me, if not, we just accept, but.
You, you basically imply that the Bible is not a reliable source. I don't. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it's interesting time for me to get into why, why like the question you want to ask me, but why.
Doesn't exist? Well, I want to get to that, but I just want to explain one thing to you. And it's, you know, that is that the Bible is more reliable than any ancient document that we have. We have more copies.
We have the earliest copies. We have supporting evidence outside of the Bible. We don't have that with, we don't have that with Julius Caesar and yet no one questions, you know, Julius Caesar. All right.
So when, when you make statements like that, for me, someone who, who has studied this textual criticism and things like that, it, you know, you've been trying very hard to, when you say things, you preface that you don't want to be insulting or, and I don't want to be insulting with this, but it, it, it gives me the air of thinking that you really haven't studied the issue, but you've come to absolute conclusions because if you've done even the smallest amount of study, you realize that it is more reliable than any other ancient book that we have by, by mountains, by miles of evidence.
So, so I challenge you to, to, to look at that some more and we could, we could talk more. I mean, I have, I'm hoping that this is not the only time we end up talking, but... I sure hope not. I mean, I agree.
Yeah. So let's, let me get to the question I did want to get to earlier, and that was, you made a statement that you know that the Christian.
God does not exist. I'm convinced, I'm convinced the Christian God doesn't exist. How are you convinced that only the Christian God? Right. So like I said before, and just to be clear, I'm, I, I doubt very seriously that any creator God exists.
I've, I've not researched, and I guess it may be fair to say that the Jewish God as well, because Jewish, I mean, the, at least about the Old Testament, it's the same thing anyway. I've, I've read through portions of the Quran, I've read portions of the, of the Bhagavad Gita and stuff like that, but I haven't, but I'm still working on, on that.
So I don't want to say, oh yeah, I know, you know, for sure, or I'm convinced of those other things. But my argument, or at least my personal argument is for why I'm personally convinced the Christian God doesn't exist, is, is three things.
One, the Bible's wrong. Demonstrably, factually incorrect on too many things to be taken seriously. And it's just littered with, with just falsehoods, just absolute falsehoods. The second is the, the God of the Bible seems to be contradictory.
One of the, one of the big contradictories, and I know that this can be a hot button topic, but, and it's a big one, and that's the, the problem of, of evil. It seems to me, and again, I'm only talking about me personally, it seems to me that if we look at, like 1st John 4 says that God is love, okay?
1st Corinthians describes love as kind and patient, etc. And yet we see, we read about the things that this, this God apparently does in the Bible. And purely from, from my perspective, I, I'm sure if we get onto it, we can't say, well, you know, you can't imagine what it might be like to be this kind of God.
But I, I couldn't do the things that this God apparently did without seemingly batting an eye. And the last one is the convergence of evidence when it comes to evolution. Evolution is an absolute fact of population genetics.
It is cross-confirmed by multiple disciplines. And what I say, what I say to that typically is, is if you've got, if you've got the stones to take down evolution, don't bother trying to tell me. Because there is unbelievable world, damn near overnight, worldwide fame and more fortune you could ever spend in your life for someone who can take down what is arguably the most well-established theory in all of science.
And for those reasons, I'm convinced. And it kind of all flows back to the Bible because the Bible talks about, you know, the, the, the story, like the creation of the animals and stuff like that. And it just flies in the face of what we, of what we, the royal we can demonstrate is just not true.
I'm convinced.
That Christian God does not exist. KT says what I, what I was thinking, you're, you're not God, you're not omniscient and you're not perfectly holy. You know, there's, there's a lot of, I mean, you, you say evolution is an absolute fact and yet it's scientifically impossible.
It's a bait and switch. You have special evolution that nobody, nobody disagrees with. And that is used as proof for general evolution. And it's a bait and switch. And that's all evolutionists have. When we speak of special evolution, we're talking speciation.
We're talking of a loss of information in DNA for general evolution to be true. You have to have a gain of, of information in the DNA and have it both be beneficial and reproductive. You know how many things the, the secular scientists have found that is a mutation, which is the gaining of information that's both reproducible.
And beneficial? Zero. Like I said, just submit, just like, don't like,.
No, it's, it's, you know why peer review doesn't work? Because when it comes from a creationist, the peer automatically rejects it. That has happened over and over and over again. They won't accept any peer reviewed document to, to peer review a document from Christians because their starting point is absolutely that evolution is a fact.
You can't question it. Once you question it, it gets rejected. You, you yourself are an example of it. You've, you said, you will reject anything that doesn't support, bring no evidence to you because you don't want.
To hear it. And because you can bring all this evidence. And actually the conversation you had last week was really, it was really decent. There's a part of me that's glad I didn't get pulled into that conversation because between you and I'm sorry, I'm just going to Anthony and Michael Anthony you guys from a scientific perspective way smarter than me.
So I would have, I would have sounded really silly trying to, trying to talk at that level. But it's, you know, and the hard part is what you're suggesting is this kind of worldwide centuries old conspiracy.
Um, scientists, the first scientists were Christians. Yeah, they were,.
But, but here's the thing is when you keep in mind exactly as the Bible said they would do, they, they worship man over the creator. That's, that's what you see in evolution. It's it's the Bible actually predicted these things.
We're not surprised by it. The fact that people hate God, we're not surprised by that. The fact that people want to come up with a way that they can not be accountable to God, to have an explanation of how the world came about without having God in the picture.
So they don't have to, so they could feel that when they die, they just go into nothingness, you know, and, and you're saying it with, you know, the Bible isn't true. And yet your starting point is you, you, you're have to realize that you're saying the Bible is not true because it either doesn't make sense to you, or it doesn't fit with the non supernatural worldview that you want to accept, even though no matter what you do, you can't explain the universe outside of the supernatural because something had to create.
The natural world. My inability to explain it is an evidence for your God. Okay. But.
Your inability to explain it, and yet you make absolute statements. You may make absolute statements based on ignorance. That's the thing I'm trying to point out to you. I want you to see.
What you're doing. The Bible. So if you start, like, I understand, I understand when you start from, everybody has axioms. Everybody has, everybody has, I believe everybody has axioms, at least to a certain extent.
If you start with God is real and the Bible is true, then everything within the Bible is easily reconciled. But if you start with, let's just look at it and apply it to what we can, can know and what we can show, that's where, like, the Bible says stars will fall from the sky.
That, that was written by somebody who didn't.
Know what a star was. Well, hold on. No, stop right there because here's, here's the thing.
Does the Bible say stars will fall from the sky? And what does it mean? So it's taught, what's, it's giving a couple of different references. One of the references, one of the hermeneutic references I've, I've heard is that it's talking about angels.
And then another one of the references that I read was actually meaning that the, like during the tribulation, that stars will actually fall from the sky. So I'm not sure which one you're referring to.
Well, it depends on the.
Context of, of their, cause there are some that refer to angels as stars. Okay. The point being is the Bible was not written as a scientific textbook. Let me ask, let me ask you a question. But it makes scientific claims.
Yeah. Have you ever, have you ever seen a, you know, the sunrise? Well, that's a figure of speech. Ah, so you recognize that we have figures of speech, but yet you want to take a figure of speech and say, no, it has to be a literal thing when it comes to the Bible.
See, the problem isn't that the Bible is wrong. The problem is that you don't.
Know how to interpret. Did an ax head float? Hmm? Did an ax head float? Yeah. God creates everything out of nothing can, can make an ax head float. So that's, again, it's like when, when it's something that, you know, when it fits his figure of speech, it's not what it fits the figure of.
Speech. If you read that text with the ax head, it is very clearly being explained that this is a supernatural thing. It is not trying to say this is a figure of speech. I don't accept that as.
Possible because I, because there's no reason to accept it as possible.
Why would you accept your evolutionary standpoint as the starting point as possible when the laws of thermodynamics would state that what the evolution's evolutionary standpoint is.
Must be impossible because the laws of thermodynamics are only do with evolution and earth and earth is evidently not a closed system. Yeah. If you, if you used, if you use.
Justin, if you, if you're referring to the beginning of the universe, yes, that, that could apply, but it can't be. The law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to evolution. It could apply to the creation of the, the, to the big bang.
But on that, I have to agree with Michael, but, but if you apply, if you say to the universe, then yeah. But so, and I know we're, we're, we got about five minutes cause we, we have some, we want to do toward the tail end of this show.
You guys have been incredibly generous. I appreciate the conversation.
You're welcome to come back anytime. I mean, this is a live show. Anyone can come in anytime. You know, I know people, you know, Anthony was trying to ask people to come in and ask questions via any of us.
And by the way, I should, I'll give a programming note. If anyone who watches this and you're, you're watching it on Facebook or YouTube or Twitter, just, just understand that some of us here that host this understand how to use technology and Anthony doesn't.
So if you see him answering questions on Facebook that you're going, what in the world is he answering? It's because he doesn't know how to click that little button at the bottom with the arrow that chain that says all and change it to just the platform of who's ever asking questions.
So he's constantly asking questions, answering questions on Facebook to people that don't have no idea what the question was.
I'm just trying to minimize my clicks. I know how to.
I don't want to go down any more rabbit holes, getting ready to wrap up. Yeah. Like to say is that is again, thank you so much for having me. You're incredibly generous with your time. I appreciate everything that you say.
Hopefully I wasn't offensive to anyone. And and I would like to not only come back, but give an open invitation to not only any of you but also to any, any of your listeners who want to come on. I love having conversations like this.
So would you mind me just giving them an email address and stuff like that? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Thecaatrodgers .com. And you can find me on Facebook. My name is spelled like it shows up there. M-I-C-H-E-A-L-S-C-U-A-R-T.
Reach out to me that way. And love to have the conversations. And and for anyone who's who anyone who is a Christian, if you ever want to come on, I'll do the same thing to you that we we've had Kent Hovind on, we've like Jenta, Saiten Brunke has been on, lots of different Christians.
And we'll offer you the offer you the same platform, absolutely 50 -50. And we'll be respectful, there'll be no profanity and stuff like that, which is a big deal for me. But there'll be no profanity whatsoever out of respect for you and your beliefs, if you decide to engage with us.
Yeah. And one of the things I wanted to say for people who don't listen to your your podcast and haven't haven't engaged with it, you know, this is this is the type of dialogue we would prefer. Right?
I mean, you know, you're saying you come on, you know, okay, I'm going to be respectful, I'm not going to use profanity, I'm not going to do things to you, because there are there are plenty of people.
And this is true on both sides, you have plenty of people that try to force their like, you're going to listen to my profanity, because I don't have to, you know, that's disrespectful. It's not a good way to, to try to make an argument.
And so I just want to point out to folks that, you know, this is this is the way we should be conducting discussions. We feel very strongly about our positions, both Michael does and the three of us do.
And yet we can have a cordial discussion, we can understand our differences, and we can discuss those things.
Absolutely. And there have been, there have been Christians that I've, that Dean and I, my podcast partner, and I have engaged with that have been really, really good. Like Sai, who doesn't have a great reputation on, you know, on the internet.
But you know, he, he's, he's local, he's a Canadian, he only lives about, well, actually, he's moving to Texas. But when he came on the pod, when he came on the podcast, we were going to go on the non sequitur, the debunked non sequitur show.
But he sent me a message that you said, you're local, you're only about two hours from me. He said, I do all these things on the internet. He said, if we're going to do this, either you're coming to me or I'm coming to you.
So he sat three feet from where I am right now. And we had a conversation. And it was great. You know, and we wholeheartedly disagreed. It was a great conversation. And, and yes, I'm in firm agreement with you, with you, Andrew, that these are the types of discussions that we should be having.
And yeah, I think that's enough said to that.
Yeah, I mean, I think the reason, you know, people have the view of Sai that they do is because they don't know him personally, they don't get to know. And when, when, you know, people sit there, and they they'll make accusations or claims like that.
And someone who likes to have people that try to contact me on Facebook Messenger, and it's like, I will never answer a Facebook Messenger. So you can stop, you know. And then every device ring, sorry about that.
Um, you know, but, you know, yeah, so I see a Justin, you're gonna try. Justin's trying to call me right now. I'm trying to get him to it. Yeah. So.
Yeah, how to shut that off. We have to pick Michael. So.
Yeah. Okay. Hi, Anthony. Here, let's see. Oh, no, he hung up. Let me just finish up with what I was saying with Sai because, you know, just so I can finish the point is, you know, when you when someone starts attacking him, he's gonna take a strong stance.
And a lot of people take that and his his, him standing up firm, as if he's being rude. I think what it is, is he's, he's very offended by the way people are speaking. Okay. And so, you know, that is, you know, so I think you saw a different thing.
And to answer Donnie's thing real quick. I'm guessing Donnie saying what's wrong with profanity saying like, as far as morally, I'm going to argue Michael's case for him. And I'll see if I'm right. But I don't think Michael would think there's anything wrong with profanity.
He's being my audience. Yeah, he's being respectful to to to us. So and I want to say thank you for that. Yeah, me too. Anthony.
Absolutely. So, so do you do you hate God? No more than I hate Darth Vader. Okay, that's fair. I, you know, I'm just trying to get an idea of where you're coming from, through all this stuff. You know, what?
I guess the trouble that I'm I'm having in listening to all this is number one. You haven't established and I'm trying to be really fair here, right? But you haven't established how the immaterial can cover the material.
So we've spent two hours, almost two hours on a podcast of you thinking through thoughts and using language, using information, speaking, and you can't account for it in your world view whatsoever. I mean, that's that's a major problem.
I would love to have you back on for us to talk through this more. But even more importantly is is this issue for you to come to a position of deciding between God and science, because that's essentially what you've done.
You've you've said that you trust science, you believe science and you don't believe in what the Bible says. You've come to judgments based off of your own fallible human understanding on things. I could be wrong.
Yeah, that's okay. See, and that's and that's the issue, right? So you could be wrong. Sure. Yeah. So, so, but yet you need to go past those wagering. No, no, I'm not. I would not do that. And then I would have side called me and say, dude, what are you doing?
No, you'd have me calling you out right here.
Yeah. No, but I mean, but you say very firmly about you, you've come to a decision, God doesn't exist. You've had I said I'm convinced. You're convinced. Yeah, it's convinced. I mean, so okay, what is convinced mean then?
Is this a firm statement? Or is this? I think so. But you know, I could be swung the other way.
I'm an atheist. I'm not a diagnostic. I am convinced that the Christian God does not exist. And the caveat that I add to that is, is, and it's not faith, whoever said that. Because there's a difference between faith and trust, regardless of what the Bible says.
But anyway, I am I am convinced with a caveat that I could be that I could be wrong. So you have a confidence, even if, even if, and I know the whole confide. The difference, the difference is, even if and I forget who said this.
Even if God exists, the Bible always it was on raw. Even if God exists, evolution is still a fact. And the Bible is still man made mythology.
Yeah, but by fact, is that could you be wrong?
I think I think I could be wrong. Yeah, I think I could be wrong.
I'm sorry. You think scientists could be wrong? Scientists? Yes. Yeah, right. I mean, they could all be wrong. So.
That's you're pushing it there. Okay, so individual scientists could be wrong. But the overwhelming like, again, you're going back, you're going back to this whole, you know, it could be wrong. But there's this there's this convergence.
It's not it's not half a dozen people in one discipline. It's thousands of people from multiple disciplines.
Right. And so just because thousands of people from multiple disciplines say something, it automatically makes it 100 fact that cannot be ever disproven.
No, it could be disproven. Darwin said this in his own book, he was or no, after he published his book, what would he was asked, what would it take to prove your theory wrong? And he famously said, fossilized rabbits in the Cambrian.
The theory of evolution would be disproven very easily. And if it ever if it ever was, I would have no problem what I would.
Have no problem walking away from it. Yeah. So but I guess my point is, is what I'm trying to figure out is with the language that you're using. And as I've sat back most of this time, and Andrew and Justin have done most of the talking is you're using very strong language at times, which seems to be very certain type language.
And then and then you kind of back off of it as we're asking more questions, because when somebody says a fact, in the world of science, a fact is something that absolutely happens. Always, like we would look at scientific laws, like those are those, those would be in the realm of being facts.
They now I and I know there's a caveat to write a law is not exactly a fact. But in terms of certainty, that's what we would have to have to view it as. Right. So yeah, so I mean, we would because of the law of gravity, I know that, that I can drop my phone, and every single time I drop it, it's going to call Andrew.
Yeah, or call Andrew, right? Okay, I can call that a fact. But you're, you're saying that evolution is a fact on one hand. Yet, on the other hand, you're saying it is possible you're wrong,.
It's possibly evolutionists are wrong. And what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is, is that is I could be, I could be wrong in how I'm interpreting it. And there could be there could be errors in it. And again, it's, it would be painfully easy, ridiculously painfully easy for the God that you think exists to, to demonstrate it's all wrong.
Absolutely. I agree with you on that. He could just judge the whole world in righteousness at this very second. And he could absolutely prove that you're wrong. And every person that professes there is no God, that they are 100 wrong.
But his kind grace, he hasn't done it yet.
Well, no, actually, he, but he already has. See, he, you have all the evidence, you know, and this is why I said, you don't have an evidence problem. Okay, you have a spiritual problem. And we're going to end up, you know, so he let me let me wrap it up with this.
And we can come back and discuss this more another time. And Anthony may, you and Anthony can have one and then you and Justin, if you want. But the thing that and I think Anthony pointed this out as well, and I said it earlier, what, what, what really comes across, you may not even recognize this, Michael, but what comes across is over and over and over again, you say, you don't know, whenever pressed, I don't know, I'm not an expert.
But then you make absolute claims, you make strong convicted claims based on ignorance. And that's, you know, that right there would be something that should concern you. But, and we can come back and discuss it.
But, you know, and, you know, stick around, we don't, you know, we'll, you know, we can, we can continue the discussion on another show. But, but what we what I do want to do is, and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna move you guys just for a little bit here.
And I want to talk about our Kofi. For folks who don't know, this is this is someone who is a blogger with Striving Fraternity, Kofi and his family that you can see there. They are out in Oregon, or Oregon, I forget how I'm supposed to properly pronounce it anyway.
But basically, there's been some wildfires. Kofi has, I spoke to him last night, that basically what ended up happening was he recognized the fires were getting close. He figured he'd pick up some important documents and, you know, things that they really needed.
They went out to a hotel, they've discovered while they were at the hotel, the fire did come through their their area, his house is completely gone. Their whole street is completely gone. There is a GoFundMe that someone created to make it easier.
I put a Bitly link there for you, so that you can go directly there with shorter things. So it's bit .ly slash Kofi fund. And the second F, the F in fund is capitalized. So if you go exactly as you see there, bit .ly slash Kofi, K-O-F-I, capital F-U-N-D, that will bring you right to the GoFundMe for him.
He and his family are obviously going to have a lot of costs in having to be relocating. Yes, I'm sure insurance will cover a lot of things, but unfortunately, insurance doesn't kick in for quite a while.
You end up having to pay that all up front. And so if you can help him out, he and his family, I want to encourage you guys to do that. He is a really solid brother, and it's someone who is trying to serve the Lord faithfully.
He's in a church out in Oregon where he's been doing the preaching. And so I want to encourage you guys to, if you can, to help him out. So again, it's bit .ly. Just go to bit .ly slash K-O-F-I, capital F-U-N-D, Kofi Fund.
And you can find it also on my Facebook, on my Twitter. I think I've posted this everywhere. But if you could help him out, they're trying to raise quite a bit of money to be able to pay for expenses.
He is someone who's preaching every week. For those of us who are pastors, who preach on a regular basis, he has lost his entire library. That is devastating. As someone who had a library that was in boxes for nine months now, I finally got them out.
It's hard for a preacher to be without his books. Well, he has none now. He's going to end up having to start all over with that. And he's got to rebuild a house. It's going to be probably about a year before they can really recover from this.
So if you guys can help out in any way, we'd appreciate that. He is a dear brother, like I said. And we just wanted to mention that. So with that, I'm just going to close out the show and instead bring the other guys on.
Anthony and I were talking about doing something about whether you should wear a mask or not. Maybe we'll do that next week. We'll see who comes in, whatnot. If any of you guys do have questions, please come in.
This is what the show is about, is to answer questions and whatnot. So I did get a message sent to me, why do I look like I'm in the dark, turn lights on? Well, the reality is the room that I have as my office only has an outlet back behind that bookcase right here.
And so I have no lights here. End of the month, I'll have an electrician that's coming in to put in some lights. So I've done whatever I could with these little hockey puck things. So yeah, it's not ideal, but it is the best that I can do for right now.
But that is the show for tonight. I hope this was helpful for you folks. I hope that you've learned a lot. I hope that it was encouraging. And most of all, those of us who are regular watchers here, those of us that are hosts here, I'll encourage all of you to be praying for Michael, pray for his soul.
I know he doesn't believe God exists, but we all know that he does. And we want to be praying that God would bring him to repentance and to a knowledge of himself. And so that he would come back and as a believer, that is my prayer.
I hope that you guys are praying the same. So until next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. See you next time.