Secular Humanism is Superior to Christianity Debate

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

There could be cash waiting for you at findmassmoney .gov. You might have checked before, but they're always updating names.

00:06

So check again. The Mass State Treasury has over $3 billion in unclaimed property.

00:12

Maybe it's a long lost bank account, forgotten shares of a stock, or an old paycheck you somehow forgot to pick up.

00:18

Some of it might be yours. There's a lot of money that could be yours, but you'll never know until you go.

00:24

So go to findmassmoney .gov. That's findmassmoney .gov.

01:00

And what I'm going to be doing is the topic that this person wanted to debate is the topic, secular humanism is superior to Christianity.

01:14

Now you guys judge whether you think I won or not, whether in fact I even needed to show up to win.

01:20

Because I would argue he lost, but not because of anything I needed to say, but because his arguments were really just that bad.

01:36

Welcome to the Rap Report with Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

01:43

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:56

All right, well welcome to another Rap Report. I'm your host Andrew Rapaport, and as I said, we're going to play a debate that I had on another person's channel,

02:05

Marlo from The Grace Truth Show. He's got a YouTube channel, does a lot of debates, really good stuff out there.

02:13

But on this debate, just pay attention. You're going to see that this person really was interested in a monologue.

02:20

Steve did not want to have a debate. There were supposed to be three cross -examinations. You're going to hear that he does a monologue during the first cross -examination.

02:30

I chose to do a monologue as well and do more of a rebuttal. And therefore, the second round, the moderator explained to him he's supposed to do cross -examination.

02:41

He does another monologue. He was very distracted. You're going to hear that the arrogance of his view,

02:48

I believe. You're going to hear that he thinks he's right because he believes he's right. That's really what you end up seeing here.

02:54

And so you be the judge how this went. But I hope this is helpful for you to see how to debate secular humanists.

03:03

So here is my debate from the Gospel Truth Debate channel.

03:10

And let these guys introduce themselves. I have Andrew Rapaport, who I met online through Facebook and the whole nine.

03:18

And he's actually been on my show before. And apparently, I didn't get this note.

03:24

But apparently, when somebody bring him on the show, I'm supposed to get a book. But he clarified that.

03:30

I want a book, Andrew. And he clarified that statement that he said, well, I have to come on and talk about the subject matter of his book.

03:35

And we didn't really talk about the subject matter of his book. So it's all good. But I plan on getting him on so I can get my book.

03:41

I want my book, Andrew. But Andrew's a great guy. I mean, he's such a blessing. I learned a lot from watching his YouTube videos and everything.

03:46

So I'm going to allow Andrew to come in and introduce himself. And just so he can express how much of a blessing he is to everybody.

03:54

Go ahead, Andrew. You got it, man. You get a free book.

03:59

Yeah, I want a free book, Andrew. You know, you shouldn't be Jewish like me.

04:05

You have the understanding of the value of free. So I'm Andrew Rapaport.

04:12

I am with Striving for Eternity Ministries. And as I just said, I'm from a Jewish background. And so I converted into Christianity.

04:20

And I started the ministry because basically, I look to disciple Christians to evangelize, to apologetics, better defend the faith in Christian living.

04:34

So I was a pastor at a Chinese American church for many years and stepped down from there and got into public speaking.

04:41

And so not by choice, but that's what I ended up doing. Because people were asking me to travel to speak at conferences and things.

04:48

So I travel around the world and speak. And I write books.

04:54

I've got What Do They Believe, which is a book on Western religions, the major Western religions.

05:00

And then I have a book on What Do We Believe, which is a book on Christian theology. And I'm working on a book on the deity of Christ, the claims of the

05:08

Christ through just the gospels. So I do a lot of podcasting, as you know.

05:15

But I have, I'm the executive director of the Christian Podcast Community. So I have

05:21

Andrew Rapport's Rapp Report, which is a weekly podcast. I have a daily, Monday through Friday, two -minute podcast called

05:27

Andrew Rapport's Daily Rapp Report. And then a more lively one is every

05:32

Thursday night, we do Apologetics Live, which is not a formal debate, although sometimes we do formal debates there.

05:37

But we have two -hour show where we have anyone comes in, asks whatever questions they have. This week,

05:44

I'm going to have Dr. Jason Lionel, astrophysicist in. So if there's any people that ever wanted to ask him a question, you can come on in.

05:50

Just go to ApologeticsLive .com. And then I have a podcast for podcasters. So you want to be a podcaster is the name of that one.

05:57

So that's enough about me. All right. Thank you, Andrew. Appreciate you once again for coming on, participating in this debate.

06:04

Okay, Stephen, go ahead and give a quick introduction of yourself. Hey, what's up? I'm Stephen Bunnell.

06:09

People online call me Destiny. I stream on Twitch. And I have a YouTube channel, both called Destiny. And I do video games and then politics and philosophy, which

06:17

I'm guessing is why I'm here, for the politics and philosophy, not the video games. And yeah, I guess spiritually, I would be considered an atheist or an agnostic.

06:25

And yeah. All right. Thank you, Stephen. That's it, Stephen? That's all you're going to give me, Stephen? Yeah, that's where we're at.

06:32

All right, good. Thanks, dude. I appreciate you being here, man. I really do appreciate you taking time out of your schedule, man. All right, fellas.

06:39

So we're going to get this show on the road. Once again, I appreciate both of you coming on and participating in this debate. So with that said, let me go ahead and run down the format.

06:47

We're going to have a five to 10 -minute opening statements. And then we're going to about a 60 -minute discussion, which crossfire.

06:52

Each participant will get a total of 30 minutes of crossfire.

06:58

So after 10 minutes expire for one person, the next person gets 10 minutes until the expiration of the full crossfire time.

07:05

Then we're going to closing statements. If I have any questions after the crossfire, I'll introduce those questions after the crossfire.

07:12

But if I don't, we'll go right into the closing statements. And then we'll close out the debate from that point. And then we'll head on out of here.

07:20

Everything's cool with that? Yeah, sounds good. Sounds good. OK, sounds good. Sounds good.

07:26

And afterwards, Stephen teaches me how to do some video gaming. Cool. Yeah, for sure. For sure, man. You got to put us up on game on that,

07:32

Steve. Come on, man. All right, with that said, Stephen, you are arguing the affirmative.

07:39

Is secular humanism superior to Christianity? You are arguing affirmative. So you go first with your opening statement.

07:48

OK, so basically my position is that if we're going to make the best decisions about how to further human existence and human happiness, it's better to look at facts in like an objective light, an objective manner.

07:58

So it's really important that we are taking a truthful look at the world around us. And when it comes to spirituality, it seems like it's really hard to justify any type of supernatural claims about existence or what happens after existence or anything like that.

08:13

So my affirmative for secular humanism, I guess, is basically just an appeal to making sure that when we're doing investigations of the world around us, we're like looking into what are the most fact -based positions so that we can make the best decisions possible to make people's lives better.

08:30

And yeah. All right, all right. That is quick. Was that two minutes?

08:35

Two minutes, Steve? All right. All right, Andrew, you got it, man.

08:41

You can go ahead. Go for your opening statement. Steven, for coming in to have this debate and for Marlon for hosting it, although that was a really short, short opening.

08:52

I might go a little bit longer. Basically, here's the thing that we're going to see in this debate.

08:58

It is interesting because right off the bat, we see the talk about objectivity.

09:04

Now, I asked for a definition of terms from Steven, terms of what is superior secular humanism,

09:11

Christianity. So superior, he's defined as better than secular humanism as appreciation or love of humanity without the need of a higher power,

09:19

Christianity, collection of beliefs inspired by the Bible. I asked him a question of do we have a free will?

09:27

Are we just chemical entities, product of the brain? He said, nope, it's all just chemicals and causality, matey.

09:35

So basically, I asked those questions for a reason to see if he believes in a free will.

09:42

We'll get to that in a bit. But here's what you end up seeing is we have to go to an objective standard. This debate is not is secular humanism superior to Christianity to Steven or others who agree with him?

09:55

That's not the debate. No, the debate is the question of is secular humanism itself by definition better than Christianity?

10:09

That's what Steven's going to have to prove. But he has to do it from an objective standard. And that's what's needed for this.

10:16

Now, if we're just chemical reactions, there is no objective standard. You cannot appeal to an objective standard with saying everything's just chemicals.

10:26

So you first need to have a standard to go by. Now, when we talk about the many things

10:32

I anticipate that he will bring up is he's probably going to bring up many things that he's going to see in the

10:39

Bible that are objectionable that he's going to have. Now, the issue there is by what standard is he appealing?

10:46

He's going to have to have the argument that he can prove his worldview even exists without relying on.

10:54

Well, God, he's going to have to be able to prove that things like knowledge, laws of logic, truth, morality, concepts.

11:01

You're hearing my voice. It is nothing but a vibration of air. But you understand the meanings of those words.

11:07

If I start and suddenly start speaking Cantonese, I don't think many of you would understand that you understand those concepts.

11:13

But that's an immaterial thing. He's got the burden to prove that's a material thing, because if there are immaterial entities, like I've mentioned, all these things he relies on, then the problem for him will be that his worldview itself relies on an immaterial source, because material matter cannot produce immaterial things.

11:33

Therefore, it needs an immaterial source, that immaterial source we'd refer to as God. And so therefore, he would end up having a self -defeating worldview.

11:41

Now, there's a reason I asked about free will. I'm going to, I want to give a lengthy quote in my opening from an article called

11:50

There Is No Such Thing As Free Will by Stephen Cave. Why do I quote this? Because this is someone who would agree with Stephen's argument from his positions, but it also ends up revealing that the claims he's going to make against Christianity probably will see, actually make a worse claim when we read this article about his.

12:08

So here's a lengthy quote. In 2002, two psychologists had a simple but brilliant idea.

12:15

Instead of speculating about what might be, if people lost belief in their capacity to choose, they could run an experiment to find out.

12:24

So Kayleen Voss, then at the University of Utah and Jonathan Schooler of the

12:31

University of Pittsburgh, asked one group of participants to read a passage arguing that free will was an illusion and the other group to read a passage that it was neutral on the topic.

12:43

Then they subjected the members of each group to a variety of temptations and based on their behavior, would the differences of abstract physical, philosophical beliefs influence people's decisions?

13:00

Yes, indeed. When asked to take a math test with cheating made easy, the group primed to see free will as illusionary proved more likely to peek at the answers.

13:15

When given the opportunity to steal, to take more money than they were due from an envelope of one dollar coins, those that believed in free will had been more determined to pilfer.

13:35

On a range of measures, Voss told me she and Schooner found that, quote, people who are induced to believe less in free will are more likely to behave in immorality, unquote.

13:48

If that seems that people stop believing, it seems that when people stop believing we are free agents, they stop seeing themselves as blameworthy for their actions.

14:04

Consequently, their actions, they act less responsible and give in to their baser instincts.

14:13

Voss emphasized that this result is not limited to the conceived conditions of their lab experiment.

14:22

Quote, you see the same effects with people who naturally believe more or less in free will.

14:29

Unquote, she said. Another study, for instance, Voss and her colleagues measured the extent to which a group of day laborers believing believed in free will, then examine their performance on the job by looking at their supervisors' ratings.

14:45

Those who believe strongly that they were in control of their own actions showed up for work on time, were more frequent, frequently the, more, showed up on time more frequently and were rated, rated by their supervisors as more capable.

15:01

In fact, belief in free will turned out to be a better project, projection of job performance than, than the established measurement such as self, self -professed work ethic.

15:17

Further, studies by Blomster and colleagues have linked the diminished belief in free will to stress, sense of life's meaning.

15:28

Earlier this year, the researchers published a study showing that a weaker belief in free will correlates with poor academic performance.

15:37

The list goes on. Believing that free will is an illusion has been shown to make people less creative and more likely to conform, less willing to learn from their mistakes and less grateful toward one another.

15:51

In every regard, it seems that when we embrace determinism, we indulge in the dark side.

15:58

So that's a lengthy quote, but their conclusion was, the conclusion of the article was making the point we have to pretend like there's a free will.

16:06

Now, he's going to have to show how when we're just chemical reactions, all of the research that's been done is wrong.

16:14

That'd be my closing. That'd be my opening. All right.

16:20

Thank you so much, Andrew. Thank you for Steve. Thank you also, Steve, for your opening statements. At this time, we'll be going to our cross -examination portion of the debate.

16:26

All I ask is that we speak clearly and that we're able to give each other the proper responses and clear, concise questions.

16:34

With that said, Steve, you have the first 10 minutes of your cross -examination, Andrew. Okay. So I'm just going to run down,

16:45

I guess, the stuff you wrote down, and I'll respond one at a time. So the first issue we're talking about related to determinism, we made a statement.

16:52

We're all just chemical reactions and there's no objective standard. I would say this is a non sequitur. Even if we are all just chemical reactions, there could still be objective standards.

17:01

So for instance, if I roll a rock down a hill, there are objective standards by which I can measure, say, the harm caused by the rock on the way from the top to the bottom of the hill.

17:07

I don't need there to be any type of free will or any type of whatever of the rock to just have an objective standard by which to measure things.

17:15

So I reject that idea that if we are all just chemical reactions, we can't have some objective standard by which to measure things.

17:22

I think we absolutely can. The second thing, the idea about proving the laws of logic is a really common kind of presuppositionalist talking point.

17:33

It's obvious I can't prove the laws of logic. I would argue that these are things that just appear to be granted a priori to us.

17:39

I can't really explain how they exist or why they exist. But when we get this fundamental or this foundational in our thought, you run into a lot of the same problems.

17:47

So if you ask me, well, can you prove the laws of identity or non -contradiction, then

17:52

I would say, well, no, I just kind of assume they're real. And you say, aha, well, now your worldview is unjustified. I'll ask you,

17:58

OK, well, how do you know they're real? You say, well, because God tells me. I'll say, well, how do you know that God is telling us? Well, I just know because divine revelation.

18:04

OK, so I call it a priori. You call it divine revelation. At the end of the day, we're in the same boat. The difference is

18:09

I don't make any supernatural claims with my laws of logic. You do make a lot of supernatural claims. Maybe not you specifically, but generally, a religious person does make a lot of supernatural claims with where they get their a priori revelations from.

18:21

So I prefer the simpler ones to the more complicated ones. We talk about immaterial things.

18:27

You say concepts are immaterial things. I guess I disagree with that. I would argue that concepts don't really exist other than ideas in a human mind.

18:36

So for instance, if I have a concept of a chair, if all of humanity is wiped out, that concept of a chair disappears because a chair is only a concept insofar as it's some collection of neurons that fire in people's brains when they bring up the concept of a chair.

18:49

It's not something that exists in an immaterial fashion that people draw from or can have information from. It's just a kind of a shared language thing where we all talk to each other.

18:56

We create these universal concepts and we kind of agree about them. Even if I did, I would never grant that concepts are immaterial things that exist.

19:04

But even if I did grant that, just because concepts were immaterial doesn't necessitate a free God as well. It doesn't necessitate a

19:11

Christian God or any type of God, actually. There are a multitude of immaterial worlds that we could imagine where these concepts come from.

19:18

And plenty of these don't require any sort of God -like figure at all. It could be aliens. It could be the matrix.

19:23

There's a trillion different ways. And the challenge for you there is always going to be, what

19:29

I ask is, how do you get information about said immaterial world? Because the only way you're going to be able to do it is from material sources.

19:35

So things like the Bible or a priest speaking to you, which are all things that have their own problems when it comes to verifying the validity of them.

19:42

And then, obviously, the questions of how do they access these immaterial truths? We talked about a bunch of experiments where people that are shown to have less free will are less likely to be moral.

19:54

Obviously, I wouldn't contest the results of any of these. And in the Western world, especially, I mean, we talk about free will a lot.

20:02

It's a really important thing for a lot of people. So it wouldn't surprise me that if you told them, like, hey, by the way, free will maybe isn't really the way that you think it is, that people kind of give up a lot in terms of how they view the world.

20:15

I mean, it's kind of similar to when every Christian that's made a journey to being an atheist has had a period in their lives where, oh, it feels like nothing matters because I've lost my religion and I don't have a way to evaluate what's good or bad or anything.

20:25

But, I mean, you get over it after a time and you learn that there are plenty of other ways that you can determine what is right or wrong. You don't need religion to do it.

20:31

I imagine if you take free will away from people that you could probably walk them down the same path where, you know, initially they're going, oh, well, if I had no free will,

20:38

I should just be evil anyway. And then you realize, okay, well, hold on. If everybody acted this way, life would be pretty miserable and pretty horrible.

20:43

Well, okay, even if I don't have free will, we can still act as though we do because humans engage with topics emotionally, not just intellectually.

20:50

Hey, Steve, do you want a rebuttals portion? Because it seems like you're doing a rebuttal instead of a cross -examination.

20:57

Do you want, if you want, we can add the rebuttal portion and then transition, take maybe 10 minutes off of the cross -examination portion or 20 minutes off the cross -examination portion and just give you and Andrew 10 minutes of rebuttal time.

21:12

Would that sound better? Yeah, if you want to do that, yeah, that's fine. Okay, yeah, I think I'll do that because it seems like you're rebuttaling what he's saying.

21:19

So I'll give, after you're done, I'll give Andrew 10 minutes to rebut as well.

21:28

Yeah, okay, and then I'm done. That's all I have. That's all you have? Okay. I'm sorry. Yeah, like I was, I wasn't going to say

21:33

Marlon, like you interrupted them. Okay.

21:40

So you want me to do. Yeah, you got it. So let me put, let me just put my clock back on for 10 minute rebuttal.

21:45

Okay. All right. So what we, you've seen so far in this is

21:52

Stephen has yet to actually address the main issue of this debate. Is secular humanism superior to Christianity?

21:58

He has yet to even attempt to do this. Now, can I prove the laws of logic are not products of the human brain?

22:03

Not something that was discovered by people? Yes, I can very easily. You could take the second law of logic, which is a law of non -contradiction.

22:10

You can't have A and not A in the same time, in the same way. Let's apply it to before there were any human beings.

22:16

Before there was even a universe, could the universe have existed and not existed at the same time and the same way?

22:24

Well, you either have to say yes, and therefore you have contradictions and I can say whatever I want and it doesn't matter because in your world, the contradictions exist.

22:31

Or you have to say that no, the laws of logic apply and therefore are not the product of a human brain.

22:37

Can we measure a rock objectively rolling? No, you cannot do that believing in subjectivity.

22:45

When you believe that it's just chemical reactions, the only way to measure the rock rolling is to have the same standard.

22:51

If he's using the metric system and I'm using a system in America, guess what?

22:58

We have a problem. You're not going to get the same measurement because you're using a different standard.

23:05

If someone makes up a standard back years ago, they used to call a foot the length of the king's foot or a cubit was the length of the forearm.

23:15

That's not an accurate way to measure, so they needed an objective way to get consistent things. It does have to be objective.

23:24

He says concepts are something that he thinks could be in the brain. The issue there is the fact that I'm saying words, he's understanding them, he's saying words,

23:35

I understand them. That is something that we're both understanding the concepts, and that's an immaterial thing.

23:44

However, when he talks about he can imagine a world where these things could exist, that's true.

23:53

You could imagine a world like that. It's called a fairy tale, and that's what the world that I believe people that are human secularists live in.

24:01

They live in a fairy tale. They believe in a magical bang that exploded from nothing, but then nothing was actually something exploding into everything.

24:09

It defies all the laws that we actually have, and that's why they have to say that nothing was actually something.

24:16

It's now been mathematically shown that it wasn't a singularity, but multiple singularities, so they keep having to adjust their definitions for things, but the reality is that he has not shown yet that secular humanism in any way whatsoever is superior to Christianity.

24:39

Okay. My rebuttal? Yeah, I guess now is the cross -examination portion, so we can go ahead and ask each other questions.

24:47

That would be real cool. So, yeah, Steve, you got it. Go ahead and cross -examine Andrew for 10 minutes.

24:53

Okay, sure. Let me just run down these responses real quick. So, I don't know if I would ever try to justify, or I don't think

24:59

I would need to justify secular humanism directly. Rather, what I would appeal to is the idea that if I want to make a good decision about any given environment, it's typically better to collect and analyze the information as best as possible, so using whatever objective standards that I can use to measure a particular thing.

25:16

So, if I have somebody that wants to use a fantastical measurement system, or something that is drawing on concepts that nobody can verify, it seems like it would be very hard to make an accurate decision on how to deal with any given problem.

25:28

So, for example, let's say we have a sick person, and one person wants to weigh, say, medical data, biological sciences, sociological data, income, to figure out what's the best outcome for this person, and another person wants to draw on immaterial concepts, like, well, if we say prayers for them, they'll feel better.

25:42

It's very hard for that other person to make an accurate assessment of what is the best path forward for the other person, for the actual sick person.

25:49

So, I usually appeal to things that are somewhat physically verifiable in order to say, well, these are the best decisions we can make.

25:56

So, when we talk about, or if I were to talk about secular humanism versus Christianity, I would say, well, any type of secular ideology is going to be superior to a

26:04

Christian one, because any time we can gather and analyze information in a more objective manner, it's going to be superior to somebody that's kind of inventing a story in order to give us prescriptive statements that may or may not be good, but we can't really hold these to any type of objective standard, because they're coming from, you know, like old religious texts or old religious law.

26:22

A couple of the other random things, talking about how could there have been non -contradiction before a universe, I can't fathom what anything would have been like before the universe.

26:30

I would challenge you to be able to do the same. I, yeah, I mean, I'm going to, obviously, I'm going to concede to say that there is a boundary to what we can know right now as people.

26:38

I don't even know if humans, given all a perfect information set of the universe, could know what the universe was like before the universe.

26:44

But, of course, I mean, I would pose the same challenge to you. What does the world look like before God, or any question like that?

26:50

We could retreat back to the ground that, well, maybe God is eternal. Like I said, well, maybe the universe is eternal, and we're kind of in the same boat again.

26:57

So, we mentioned, like, can we measure a rock rolling objectively? And we said, well, of course not. What if people have two different systems of measurement?

27:02

And then we give an example of two different systems of measurement. But the problem is that even though that example is true, we still do use these measurements to compare things.

27:13

Some people have metric systems, some people use imperial systems, but somehow we still have found ways to reconcile our measurements so that we all kind of measure the same thing.

27:19

So, it seemed by virtue of that own example that, well, yeah, we can, obviously, ground common measurement systems. We do it all the time.

27:27

Concepts. So, apparently, we're having, I'm not 100 % sure what immaterial means. And when we're talking about, like, we're saying words and understanding concepts, therefore, things are immaterial.

27:36

So, my physicalist or materialist definition is that every phenomenon that arises can be traced to, like, physical causes.

27:43

So, when I talk, some portion of my brain is being activated that is accessing concepts that I'm using to move my throat, my tongue, and everything to vocalize a sound.

27:51

You hear that sound, and then you compare it to things that you understand in your own brain because you've been introduced to these concepts, like language or other types of concepts, and then you are able to, like, have these ideas in your mind.

28:01

Nothing about the process of us communicating requires any sort of immaterial world or immaterial knowledge or anything of the sort.

28:08

So, I don't know where immaterial things have to come in for communication. And then the final point is that, you know, we obviously point to the magical Big Bang that explains everything.

28:17

I mean, obviously, science doesn't have an answer. It maybe never will for how the universe started. But, I mean, it's just as much a fairytale to say that God created everything as it is to say there is a

28:25

Big Bang that created everything in the beginning of the universe. I mean, I don't think one of these things is, like, super logical, like God made everything, and the other one is super fantastical, like there's a

28:34

Big Bang. And then, like, the final, you know, assertion, well, you have to keep adjusting things. I mean, that's how

28:40

I would expect any good, like, investigatory tool to work. You would want to keep adjusting your theories based on, you know, newly collected information.

28:48

It's much better to do that than to have to pretend that things are never wrong, like with a religious text, or to slowly say more and more things.

28:55

Well, that was symbolic. Well, that was symbolic. Well, that was symbolic. Because you later find out in a God of the Gaps fashion that a lot of the old predictions or a lot of the things that some religious texts said, you know, came to not be true, or can't be validated in any way with the tools we have today.

29:12

Okay, so, all right, my turn for cross?

29:23

Yeah, go ahead, Andrew. You got 10 minutes for cross -examination. Okay, so the way we cross -examination works is you ask me a question,

29:30

I answer it. I ask you questions, you answer it. So, based on what you had said, do

29:39

Christians use facts and observation? Yeah, I would imagine everybody purports to, yeah.

29:48

Okay, so, therefore, it's not based on story and from an old book, like you said?

29:56

Well, no, those would be the facts and observations, right? Okay, because it seems like the basis of your argument is that secular humanism is better, as you had stated, because it's better to use facts and observation versus story.

30:13

So, the only way it could be better or superior is if that was true. If that's not true, then you still have yet to show how it's superior.

30:21

So, how specifically is secular humanism superior to Christianity?

30:28

So, if you ask, do Christians use facts and observations, I would say, well, they purport to use facts and observations, but their facts and observations tend to be non -verifiable supernatural truths or things from, like, religious texts.

30:40

So, I would say everybody uses facts and observations, but what I would challenge Christians on is the veracity of the facts and observations they use.

30:49

So, I would say that's, like, the problem with religious people, is the facts and observations they lean into tend to be supernatural, unverifiable, immaterial things.

30:57

So, the superiority of, like, secularism would come from the fact that, ideally, we don't rely on, like, supernatural truths, like things that we actually can understand.

31:06

But you just spent a good amount of time explaining that we don't know the beginning of the universe, we don't know how that is.

31:12

So, you are in a position that you have a science of the gaps, you show that, you shove science in to say that science may have an answer, but you have just admitted that you have unverifiable conclusions that you make.

31:24

So, you're saying it's, again, I'm going to ask the same question again until we get an answer, you keep showing that there's no basis in which secular humanism is superior to Christianity, because the argument you just made earlier was that secular humanism is superior because Christianity has unverifiable things.

31:44

You've admitted that your worldview, secular humanism, has unverifiable facts. Okay, so now we're on the same boat.

31:51

How is it superior? Um, yeah, so this, I totally reject this.

31:57

So, you're saying that my problem is I say, well, Christianity has unverifiable claims, and then you turn it around and you say, well, you can't tell me how the universe started.

32:03

I don't think appealing to the hardest questions of all of science, like what may be literally the hardest question to ever answer, and then saying, since you don't have an answer to that, all of your claims are just as unverifiable as mine.

32:15

I don't think the beginning of the universe is a question that we need to answer before we begin either an investigation locally of our own world or trying to answer questions about how we should act in the world.

32:27

I don't think I needed an answer to how did the universe begin to know whether or not I say should murder somebody or should not murder somebody, or maybe to figure out what is the most effective medicine to heal somebody.

32:38

My, my problem with Christians isn't that they have some unverifiable claims. It's that they use these unverifiable and unverifiable claims to make judgments about the world on a daily basis.

32:48

Scientists don't go around saying your car is going to start and turn on because the big bang happened, whereas Christians will say you ought to do this and this and this because this is what

32:57

God is actively saying. I don't claim to have all of the answers of the universe, the Christian does, but I also don't claim that you need all the answers of the universe to make any type of prescriptive claim or to understand any of the world around us.

33:09

Okay, I don't know if at any point Stephen's going to actually answer questions that are asked or just do rabbit trail, so we'll try this again.

33:15

See, the question, Stephen, is not what happens with it because the appeals to science are the same appeals

33:22

Christians make, okay? The issue is the secular humanism that you're arguing for is just chemical reactions.

33:29

That is directly based on, if you want to say, the creation of the universe. Therefore, you do have to answer that because you're saying it's just a product of evolution.

33:37

So, if it's just all from just random chance and it's all chemical reactions and all the studies show that that's not better because when people believe what you're espousing, they're more likely to cheat, to steal, and to be immoral.

33:54

That doesn't sound superior to me or to any objective standard. So, you said better was the standard of superior.

34:03

I'm trying to find out how secular humanism, in what measurable way we can say secular humanism is superior to Christianity.

34:14

I'm still waiting, so I'll ask it again. How is secular humanism superior to Christianity?

34:22

Yeah, so I'll restate this. I guess if any part of this doesn't make sense, I can explain in particular. But I would say that secularism is superior to Christianity because I don't rely on unverifiable, unmeasurable statements to evaluate the world.

34:38

I'm never going to tell somebody that a certain level of prayer is going to cure somebody over like a medical product of some kind.

34:43

I'm never going to tell somebody that they ought to do something because of some invisible guy or whatever that said something a long time ago.

34:49

I don't have to make any of these appeals because I don't rely on immaterial, supernatural concepts to do it. That's the better part,

34:56

I would say. Whether or not we can show that certain studies today show people have worse outcomes when they make particular decisions related to being told whether or not they have free will, well, that doesn't really say whether or not free will is better or not better.

35:09

That just says that people's ideas right now of free will are very much tied into how they view themselves. I mean, we can very easily change that.

35:15

I'm sure that if you were to ask a philosophy student that already didn't believe in free will these same questions, they'd probably give a better answer than a normal person who's constantly told they have free will.

35:23

That's not surprising to me at all. I mean, I will make appeals to science because I like that different people can come together and measure the different claims that are being made.

35:32

You can't really do that same thing with religion. If I have three different scientists in a room all telling me something different, we can all go into a laboratory and test the claims you use right.

35:40

If you have three different religious people telling us what's different, there's no way at the end of the day to settle any of these disputes.

35:45

And so if we were trying to figure out what's better, secularism versus Christianity, I would argue that the three scientists that can go into a room and come out with one conclusion is always going to be better for humanity than the three religious people that are just going to argue and fight among one another that will never give us a conclusion that all three agree on.

36:02

Okay, so you have a great straw man argument because you've yet to explain what Christianity properly is.

36:08

You continue to go through an argument that's not real. I mean, this is a red herring.

36:14

So the fact is that religion uses science. I can sit here and I can talk about facts and science because you're claiming that the universe could be eternal.

36:25

No, it can't. The first law of thermodynamics proves that. So the dilemma you have is where did the universe come from?

36:31

There's only three possibilities. Was it eternal, violating the first law of thermodynamics?

36:38

Did it create itself violating the second law of logic because it would first have to exist to be able to create itself?

36:45

Therefore, someone or something must have created. Those are the only three options. Which of those three would you hold to?

36:53

I mean, I don't think I need to demonstrate whether or not the laws of logic or thermodynamics exist before the state of the universe.

37:00

I don't think I'm capable of ever even comprehending or even imagining what a universe would look like outside of the existence of the universe.

37:06

I can't fathom that. So I mean, I wouldn't appeal to any of those three things that the universe violates non contradictory.

37:15

I can't have information about what happened before the existence of the universe. So you can't verify that?

37:23

With our current technology, it doesn't seem to be the case. I don't know if we'd ever be able to verify anything related to the initial state of the universe.

37:29

I'm not sure. OK, well, I verified it within the question. OK, you can verify these things. Like the first, second, third law and thermodynamics prove some of these things out.

37:38

So we do have some verification with these things. We can tell that matter did have a beginning. So Einstein showed that.

37:45

So there are ways to verify it. You, however, seem to have a worldview that isn't verifiable.

37:51

And then you criticize Christianity, saying it is the one that's not verifiable. So I'm still trying to figure out where we, you know, let me ask these questions in two minutes

38:00

I have left. By what authority can you argue that one chemical reaction is superior to another chemical reaction?

38:13

So if we're talking about what is superior to another thing, we're kind of making normative claims where we're comparing one state to another.

38:19

So the appeal that I would broadly make is that humans seem to prefer some states to other states.

38:24

And it seems like it's easiest if all of us kind of get together and push towards the states that most of us agree are preferable to the non -preferable ones.

38:32

So, for instance, we can imagine a world where everybody is starving and a world where everybody has food. It seems like biologically, most of us have a preference towards the second world.

38:40

And it seems like we don't violate, you know, other people's right to life or existence or whatever when we move towards that second world.

38:46

So that seems to be what we all kind of agreed to move towards. I don't believe there is an objective standard by which we can measure good or bad.

38:52

And I believe there's an objective way to say, like, this is morally virtuous versus this is like a moral wrong.

38:58

So I wouldn't go as far as to say that there's like an authority that I can appeal to for some sort of moral statement. I would just descriptively state that, like, well, people tend to move towards areas that make them feel better than other areas.

39:11

Okay. Well, there's only 19 seconds left, so I'll save the questions. All right. Thank you,

39:17

Andrew. Now, Steve, it's your turn for a timid examination. Yeah, I got you.

39:26

Wait, did my camera just turn? Oh, there you go. So I guess, like, if you're religious, you must see

39:35

God, you know, in the world today doing something, I imagine, unless you believe in the I guess in the clock starter or whatever, where he started the universe and just kind of stepped away.

39:43

Where do you see God in the world today? Everywhere.

39:50

He holds it all together. So if I were to ask you, if I were to ask you to point to a thing where I was like, which like what part of this what what fact of the world shows like this is

40:00

God. So for instance, we would talk about childbirth, right? We know how two people can have sex. We know how all of the stuff combines.

40:07

We know how the process works inside the woman. And we know how the baby's delivered. I can I can show this whole process using scientific inventions.

40:14

Where is where is God at? I guess I'm trying to find him like in any of these areas. Where do I look? Well, okay.

40:22

First off, you keep making this appeal to science, which you cannot do without God first existing because you need an ability to have laws of logic, knowledge, truth.

40:31

These things are immaterial that you want to avoid answering. So the fact is, where is

40:36

God? Well, he's in that whole process. Because if you actually understood the birth process, you'd realize that it goes it goes against the way the way that the egg is going to go down the tube to get to where it can be, you know, fertilized by a sperm.

40:50

There's little hairs that go opposite direction. And yet the egg still travels that way. How does that happen?

40:57

That that shouldn't happen, but it does happen. So it couldn't happen evolutionarily, but it does.

41:02

It happens. So we end up seeing is there's a lot of things that just couldn't be without God. So where's

41:08

God in it? Well, the whole concept, the whole idea that we can sit there and realize that this these two chemicals suddenly get an immaterial part of them.

41:20

That immaterial part of you, that is you. That part that can reason that ability to reason that ability to understand concepts.

41:29

This is part of an immaterial part of you that is at conception. So if specifically you want to know with birth,

41:36

I don't know what that has to do with secular humanism being superior to Christianity. Okay, so it seems like we've basically seeded the entire ground that God doesn't exist in any observable way in the universe.

41:47

And we want to say that, well, God is actually a precondition for logic and reason. So we'll move out of the physical world.

41:55

So we've totally could say, how do you need God for logic? What is the process like for that argument?

42:02

Okay, so one typical debate topic or debate style is to listen to what someone says, come to make a conclusion about what they said that's completely opposite and then say, well, we'll move on.

42:15

I won't let you do that. Okay, you asked for an objective, a specific way in a specific case of birth.

42:21

I gave you a specific way scientifically that it can't work evolutionarily. Okay, the childbirth thing.

42:28

I'm familiar with that. That's just not true. So I don't know how to respond to that. I can't like show us a woman. I mean, we can all go and watch like a video or we can like read in a book like how childbirth there is no hairs that prevented the fertilized egg or fetus or whatever from moving through a woman for childbirth.

42:42

I don't know how to respond to that. Okay, well, so you're just ignorant on the subject. That's fine. But don't then conclude that I haven't said that.

42:52

Okay. Okay. Yeah, I acknowledge that you said that. I mean, I guess I could leave it up to the audience to read. There's plenty of ways we can observe gods in the universe.

43:03

The fact that there is a universe is enough. The fact that you have an ability to reason, the fact that you have understand concepts, all these immaterial things are not possible.

43:15

And I know you want to move on from that. But the one thing I'm not seeing how that any of this makes secular humanism superior in any objective way to Christianity.

43:27

All you have is a bunch of claims. Yeah. So my initial claim is that Christianity is wrong for having white people.

43:35

I'm sorry, were you finished? No, go ahead. Okay, if I talk when you're talking, it'll like cut you out.

43:42

So I'm trying not to talk over you if you're responding. That's why I asked. Okay. So I've said multiple times that I think that secularism is superior to Christianity because my claims are verifiable.

43:52

So I think I can make better observations and judgments about the world, which would allow me to make better prescriptive claims about what to do with the state of the world.

43:59

So it seems like you just moved to the point that you said I was straw manning you on, which is where even if I were to concede that childbirth is somehow not possible without God, which

44:10

I wouldn't concede that. But if I did, that still doesn't show God, unless you're literally saying that God is divinely moving fetuses through women in order to have childbirth against the own bodies that God also supposedly designed.

44:23

I don't follow that argument at all. But the argument I'm more interested in,

44:29

I don't know if we'll go back to the childbirth thing, the argument I'm more interested in is this idea that you need God for things like logic. I really want to know how you can justify that claim.

44:36

How can you possibly say that we require a God for laws of logic to exist?

44:46

Why does it require God? Because immaterial things need an immaterial source.

44:54

Chemical reactions, material things cannot produce immaterial. That's just a law of nature.

45:02

So if you have anything that's immaterial, as I've kept saying, you keep saying that I'm not providing that example.

45:11

And for folks who may be watching, notice what he's doing here over and over again. He continues to appeal to say that Christians don't do science somehow.

45:22

We use the same exact science. There's very little science that's based in whether God exists or not exists.

45:30

So I've never needed to use in any of the work that I've done that God exists to program computers or develop some of the things

45:42

I've developed. No, it's fictitious. Because every time you have an immaterial entity, it requires an immaterial source.

45:56

That's something you'd have to be able to argue. Now, you argue we're just chemical reactions. Then you have to be able to answer these things.

46:02

But you have plenty of things you can't verify, as you've said. And yet you keep saying that it's us

46:08

Christians that can't verify anything. That's not being accurate to what

46:13

Christianity holds to. And the one thing that hasn't been done throughout this is any kind of even definition, other than what

46:23

I gave in the beginning, which was your definitions, to what secular humanism is and Christianity is.

46:29

You've yet to describe Christianity itself. You've made claims of Christians. That's not

46:35

Christianity. You've yet to make a support. I mean, we can go over the definitions of secular humanism and go to Christianity again.

46:46

I don't know how that's relevant to the conversation. I mean, you read them off at the start. I don't know if I could repeat them back to you if that's what you want.

46:53

But in terms of, I guess the frustrating thing is that when you go to church. So I went to church every

46:59

Sunday. I was a Catholic. When Christians talk about all the things that God is involved in, very rarely do you go and listen to a sermon about how

47:05

God is here so that we can have our prairie truths about logic. Like if we're going to back God up into this very weird, esoteric niche world where God is like the engine that powers these fundamental laws of logic of the universe, then you're talking about it in such an immaterial fashion that it's completely and totally impossible for you to ever verify it.

47:24

Because I can ask you again, because you actually haven't answered this. How do we get laws of logic from God?

47:29

And how can you even know that you're getting those laws of logic from God? If you need him just to even begin to form a thought, how can you know what he is if he's required to even think?

47:39

How do you even get that information? Sure. The laws of logic come from the nature of God. That's where they come from.

47:45

How do we know them? Because he's revealed them. He's revealed them in the heart of every single human being knows the existence of God.

47:53

He has written this. So we have the fact that he's put laws in our heart. We have a conscience.

47:58

We know right from wrong. That's the evidence. You can look at nature. God's created the stars and everything else.

48:05

So we could be in awe of how great he is. So we can look at his own creation. And then we have special revelation, which he's revealed in writing.

48:14

So we can have something objective that we can look to.

48:20

Now, if we're just chemical reactions, then there is no objective reality.

48:26

So he's given us something objective. You said no religions can compare themselves.

48:32

It can come to one true one. In my close, I will give you how to prove objectively what is the one true religion.

48:42

Okay. So then I would ask you simply, how do you know that the laws of logic come from God? You said that he reveals them to you.

48:48

How do you know this revelation is real and you're not being tricked by, say, a demon of some sort? Well, I would say, well, the answer would be very simple.

48:57

The creator who created the universe created it with laws of logic in place.

49:03

Therefore, it comes from him. To believe that we have this organized laws in place and it came about by chance, by randomness, by chaos, that takes more faith to believe.

49:17

You say you believe in things that are facts and objective and that can be researched. Show me how chaos creates organization.

49:27

Because that's essential to your view. You'll probably appeal and say, well, I can't verify that.

49:32

Well, then stop saying that we Christians are inferior because we have things we can't verify, because there's plenty of things you can't verify either.

49:40

So again, I'm just not seeing how that's making

49:46

Christianity inferior in any way to secular humanism. All right. That's 10 minutes. We're now going to close the statements.

49:53

Steve, you have the first closing statement. Oh, yeah. So I mean, my clothes. I mean, like, this is kind of like rock bottom for the presuppositional argument.

50:01

You typically you ask them, OK, well, how do you know that God is giving you divine revelation and someone's not tricking you? And they'll just circularly say, well,

50:07

God created the universe, so I know it's right. And you can keep asking that you're never going to get a response because the fact of the matter is that at the end of the day, nobody can justify like foundational truths of our existence.

50:17

So, for instance, like, how can I know that law of identity is real or causality is real or non -contradicted

50:22

Israel? Well, it just seems like things we kind of know a priori as humans. Nobody is able to justify this. No philosopher ever has no religious person ever has.

50:29

If you ask a religious person to, it always becomes circular at the end, like it did when I asked last. I'll continue to say that secular humanism ways to measure things and verify things in the world scientifically is always going to be superior than relying on old and outdated religious texts for any kind of scientific truth or any truth at all.

50:46

And those are the. Yeah, that's my closing on that. All right. All right, Andrew. Now you have 10 minutes for closing statements.

50:57

All right. Well, again, I want to thank Stephen and Marlo for having this debate, for Stephen for coming on and doing this and for Marlo for just hosting this.

51:06

Appreciate that. In closing, I would like to say that Stephen mentioned that I did not answer where the laws of logic, how the laws of logic come from God.

51:16

I think I did it when I stated he's the creator. If he created a world, a universe with the laws of logic, then it comes from him.

51:28

That's part of being a creator to say that it comes from nothing. The laws of logic come from nothing, but they work perfectly.

51:35

By the way, he keeps appealing to ancient texts. Well, the fact is, is that none of the science

51:41

Christians do science. So that doesn't prove that secular humanism is superior.

51:46

Christians do science all the time. The fact is, is that what we end up seeing in science is that it has to keep changing its own views on things, things it held.

51:57

Absolutely. I bet Stephen is not because he's not old enough to remember when there was time that people taught about ether.

52:03

Ether was this thought that there was something invisible force between all objects.

52:09

And yet, nope, there was no ether. Einstein proved that. So we change in science and that's fine.

52:15

But you know what? None of that science has ever disproven the Bible. Now, we do have people who have biases when it comes to science, and they put that bias in, and so they will restrict certain things.

52:29

We just had a case recently where a professor found soft tissue in a horn of a triceratops.

52:41

And what we what we find, he got fired for saying, well, this can't happen unless the earth is young.

52:48

So whenever we have someone that is believing in anything other than what is allowed to be taught in science, in other words, they they will shut down anything that disagrees with their conclusion.

53:00

That's called confirmation bias. And then they force that upon everyone to say, you must accept this because that's what the argument is.

53:07

And to say that anyone that's religious doesn't follow science. No, we do follow science.

53:14

We use the same science anyone else can use. There were plenty of Christians that got the men to the moon, as well as there were non

53:22

Christians. And none of that affected any of their religious system.

53:29

In fact, most of the people that started doing science were all Christians. So the whole argument he's made that secular humanism is superior to Christianity has been based on, well, of arguments of Christianity based on conclusions that he didn't affirm or couldn't verify.

53:51

The fact is, is he said that we that, you know, he does everything based on facts and objective.

53:57

But like I said in the beginning, he provided no objective standard whatsoever to be able to judge whether these two are comparable even because we are just chemical reactions in his worldview.

54:11

He's made that clear. Now, he asked, how can you know which religion is true?

54:16

There is an objective way to do that, to examine every world religion. I have studied for 14 years of my life, other world religions.

54:24

I've compared them, and I can say that there is an objective way to look at all the world religions and see which one is right versus which ones are not, which ones are manmade versus divine.

54:38

Very simply, one of the things we know about human nature is they will always praise humans will always praise their own works.

54:45

You'll see that in any time you have a king, you have a king, he goes to war. If he loses the war, he's going to praise the battles that he won during the war.

54:54

Why? Because that's what humans do. So all you have to do is look at any single religion that adds any human effort to the core part of what it means to be in a religion, getting right with God, and you have a manmade religion.

55:08

So when you look at that simple objective way, you can compare every single religion. What do you see?

55:13

Every single religion except for one, biblical Christianity, says man does something.

55:18

If it's Catholicism as Stephen grew up, that would be a manmade religion because they believe in works plus faith.

55:24

If you want to believe in Islam, you do one good work counts for 10 bad works. If you want to do

55:29

Second Temple Judaism, which is not biblical Judaism of the Old Testament, they would say you get right with God by doing

55:36

Torah, by obeying the law. So every system has this idea of works.

55:42

If you want to look at Buddhism or Hinduism, they have the idea that when you do enough good, you'll eventually get to Nirvana, you'll come back in a better life, and if you do bad, you go to a worse life.

55:52

But again, based on works. The reality is what we see in the one true religion, which God revealed in scripture, is the fact that all of us,

56:00

Stephen, myself, Marlo, and all of you watching included, all of us break God's law. We have a conscience.

56:05

We know, we lie, we steal, we do things that break his law. That's why we have that guilty feeling, so that not only can we look at the universe and know

56:13

God exists, but we can look at our conscience and know we've broken his law, but he made a way of escape, that God himself did all the work.

56:21

God himself became a man, came to earth, and he paid the full punishment of sin upon himself on that cross.

56:28

When he was on that cross, he took the full weight of sin, the punishment that I deserve, and he paid it himself.

56:37

Being an eternal being, this is why it's important that he's God. This is another unique thing of Christianity.

56:43

Not only is it the only one where God does everything, but it is the only one that's not based on a system of morality. Another objective way you can compare is that every man -made system is a system of morality.

56:56

Christianity is not. Christianity is not based on teachings. It's based on a person, and that person being

57:03

Jesus Christ. Why is it unique with him? Because he is truly God and truly man. Being truly man, he can pay the fine of other people as long as he's never broken the law.

57:14

Being truly God means that he is eternal, and being an eternal being, he can pay the punishment for not only all time, but multiple people because of his nature being an eternal being.

57:28

Here's two of three objective ways you can compare which religion is true. I'll get to the third in a moment, but the thing is that what you end up seeing is that Christ on that cross became sin, paid the price of sin that we could be set free.

57:43

The fact is that he paid it, but if we don't receive that gift, that payment's not for us because people's pride think they can do it their own way.

57:52

A third objective way is that every religion will say that God is both just and merciful.

57:58

Islam will refer to Allah most merciful, but you cannot have justice and mercy in the same way in the same time.

58:06

They're mutually exclusive. If Stephen was to slap me in the law, and I don't think he would, but if he was to slap me and the law says that I must slap him back,

58:16

I can do one of two things. I can slap him, that would be just. I can show mercy and not slap him, but I cannot do both.

58:23

If I tap him lightly, that's not grace, that's not mercy, and it's not just. So you get neither.

58:29

Only within Christianity do you have justice and mercy because Christ himself, being a man, was able to go to that cross and take the full weight of sin upon himself, and therefore he took all that sin so it was fully paid.

58:46

Therefore, the justice was paid. Now he can offer mercy. And so what Christianity actually teaches has nothing to do with what we've actually been talking about, unfortunately, today.

58:59

It is about the fact that we can be reconciled to God, that we can be free from guilt of sin and not have to turn to drugs and alcohol and all these different things, or turn to fairy tales like believing in frogs that can become princes over millions of years.

59:14

The reality is that we will all be accountable to God. It's appointed unto man once to die and then a judgment, and we're going to face

59:21

God one day. And how will you stand? Will you stand before God and be seen as righteous in his eyes because you have accepted his free gift, or will you stand before God and have to pay for the consequences of your sins?

59:34

That's the way to know one true religion. Now, in the conclusion of this debate, I would have to say that in nowhere did we see established that secular humanism is objectively superior to Christianity other than in the mind of my opponent.

59:51

He made claims about Christianity that are untrue. He didn't give anything that shows that Christianity itself is the basis of somehow this thinking that he claims

01:00:03

Christianity has. He didn't substantiate any of it, and he couldn't verify any of the things that are essential to his belief system.

01:00:12

So I would say that when he says everything is just a chemical reaction and then he wants to appeal to an objective source, that's no longer a chemical reaction.

01:00:22

And I would argue that in his opening statement when he said he appeals to objective facts and things he could objectively observe, well, he can't do that if it's just chemical reactions.

01:00:35

There's only one thing that we can look at as scientific evidence of the universe. You need someone to create something and someone to observe it and someone to record it.

01:00:44

That's what we have in the Bible. God created the universe. He observed it. He recorded it.

01:00:50

It follows a scientific method. He will destroy it and recreate it one day. So what we end up seeing is the only scientific method you have for the creation universe is found in Genesis chapter one.

01:01:02

All right. All right. Thank you, too. I have one question, one question for you, too.

01:01:10

As the subject matter of, you know, is Christianity superior, secular humanism superior to Christianity?

01:01:16

How, first, I guess Stephen can answer this question first. How would you say that secular humanism is better than Christianity when we take into consideration all the wars and everything, the amount of death that we've seen within the last,

01:01:32

I guess, 100 years or so? From the atheist perspective, when you have regimes, regimes that are headed by atheistic philosophy, how would you handle that one,

01:01:47

Stephen? Wars are, I mean, it would depend on the particular war. Wars are very complicated geopolitical issues that can be a convergence of a lot of different types of things.

01:01:56

Economic despair can cause social woes. There's so many different types of things that can cause wars.

01:02:03

I wouldn't even attribute religious wars to religion. I wouldn't say that ISIS is the product of Muslims or that I don't even know if I would go as far as to say the

01:02:13

Crusades were religious wars. There are so many things that come together to make conflict happen between people.

01:02:22

I think to ascribe it wholly onto either somebody's religion or lack thereof is an incredibly simplistic and naive way of analyzing very complicated human behavior.

01:02:31

Okay, Andrew? I'd say amen to Stephen. I think more folks from secular humanism perspective should listen to what he just said there because the reality is that wars are complex.

01:02:48

People try to make this case that he brought up the

01:02:53

Crusades. Even though it was called a holy war, there was so much political.

01:02:59

The Catholic Church was doing a whole lot to gain power by sending the nobles. There's a lot in play in religious wars.

01:03:06

I think there are times where some wars are over specific things and they're clarified that way.

01:03:13

I think our civil war was even that. You could say, okay, was it over slavery? Man, it was also over taxes.

01:03:21

It's not always so clear with those things. I would say that we end up seeing some of the things and maybe your question is coming in because a lot of, and I wasn't sure

01:03:35

I actually had this in my cross because I thought this may be where Stephen was going to go. There are a lot of people that try to say that religious wars have killed, that more people have been killed in the name of religion than in atheism.

01:03:49

That wouldn't actually be true if you keep an apples to apples description. If we're going to say, okay, we look at the wars done by Muslims and Jews and Catholics and all these others, you could add them all up, but when you start putting

01:04:05

Mao, Stalin, Lenin, and their views, well, all of a sudden there's more in the last hundred years than all the religions combined.

01:04:13

I'll agree with Stephen that it's not really a fair way to make the analysis. If Stephen made that argument and made that case, then yeah, it would be fair to say, okay, let's look at Mao, Stalin, Lenin, because then it's an apples to apples.

01:04:26

Okay. What would you guys say, Andrew, I'd like you to go first on this one.

01:04:32

What would you guys say to, I guess, from the

01:04:38

Christian position of the relief that we've seen in America, throughout the country, throughout the world, as far as humanitarian reliefs, of helping humans throughout the world.

01:04:50

What would you say, Andrew? Do you say that the Christian position is more proliferated there?

01:04:58

It's stronger there? Or would you say the secular position would be stronger?

01:05:04

Well, yeah. I mean, it's been shown that Christian organizations are usually the first ones into places where there's natural disasters.

01:05:14

Now, granted, we go in, Christians, let's be really clear, Christians are going in because there's tragedy.

01:05:21

They care for their fellow man. They care where they spend eternity. For a lot of times, we're going in for a gospel opportunity, as well as the humanitarian aid.

01:05:31

But what we do end up seeing, most of the Red Cross, Salvation Army, all these were originally

01:05:37

Christian -based organizations. Even though they've gotten bigger and gotten away from some of that, they were still

01:05:43

Christian -based. But again, when comparing that,

01:05:49

I would look at that and say it's the same thing as with my opening. When people don't believe that they're accountable, when they don't believe they have a free will, when they believe they're just chemical reactions and products of chance, they don't care as much about their fellow man.

01:06:06

So they're not going to go in to those areas. And I think there will be a time when secular humanism is going to be going against not

01:06:17

Christianity, but Islam. Sorry, but secular humanism, once they get rid of all the

01:06:22

Christians and Islam starts taking over, the Muslims will die for what they believe in and secular humanists won't.

01:06:29

Because secular humanism is about selfishness. By definition, it's about what's good for me, what

01:06:34

I believe. So therefore, they're not going to be caring about their fellow man if they actually believe it.

01:06:41

Fortunately, the majority of people that profess to be secular humanists don't live that way.

01:06:47

And I'm glad for that. Why? Because they have a God -given conscience. And so they don't live out their belief system, which is good.

01:06:57

Okay. Steve, you have any comments on that? I mean, there's a lot to deal with.

01:07:03

You can still be selfish and still help other people. That doesn't require some godly thing to do it.

01:07:09

So for instance, I have a son and my love for him is entirely selfish. I love my son. I would do anything for him, not because I need

01:07:15

God to make me not selfish, but because he's my son and I love him and I would do anything for him. And it makes me, just by virtue of that alone, that makes me happy to do it.

01:07:21

So I can still be selfishly motivated to do things for other people, a form of self -interested altruism almost.

01:07:28

Okay. One last question for you guys. What about the situation where we see

01:07:35

Christians misbehaving? You know, okay, we see from a macro standpoint, we see humanitarian efforts from Christian organizations, but from a micro standpoint, we always hear about those who are influenced or quote unquote, we would say are supposed to be influenced by the

01:07:55

Christian position. You know, we hear allegations of child molestation. You know, we hear allegations of stealing from the church, you know, things like that.

01:08:05

Like how do we handle that Andrew? Okay. Well, the way to handle that is to realize that the majority of people who claim they're

01:08:14

Christian are not. Now, this is not the true Scotsman fallacy. Okay. True Scotsman fallacy is a case where you have no way of measuring something.

01:08:24

We do have a way of measuring what a Christian is, you know, as really in the way Stephen did it, you know, when

01:08:30

I asked him for a definition, you know, collection of beliefs that are inspired by the Bible. So the

01:08:36

Bible tells us what a Christian would be and what a Christian would not be. And so the Bible says that a

01:08:42

Christian is someone who's going to believe that Christ alone died for them and that they received that gift of eternal life.

01:08:49

It's, you know, do you see people that grew up in a Christian home and are false converts or hypocrites?

01:08:55

Well, the Bible is really, really clear that there will be hypocrites. Actually, most of the parables.

01:09:02

If you look in the New Testament, people would like to talk about the fact that Jesus spoke more about hell than heaven.

01:09:09

And they spoke more about money than heaven and hell combined. Well, you know, Christ spoke about hypocrisy more than heaven, hell and money combined.

01:09:16

Why? Because it's going to be prevalent. So he said, many, not few, many will come to me in that day, referring to the day of judgment.

01:09:24

Many will come to me in that day and say, Lord, I've done many great things in your name. I've healed the sick.

01:09:29

I've done miracles. I've done all these works. And he says, and I will declare to you, I never knew you depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

01:09:36

So it's really clear. You see, the parable of the four seeds on the different soils, right?

01:09:44

And they're in the different soils. One's a believer. One's not a believer. Two are false converts. Two of them, one grows up quickly.

01:09:51

They look like they're a believer. Then they die out. It takes more time, but eventually the world chokes them out.

01:09:57

So basically, we see that the scriptures where there will be hypocrites. There will be people that are pretending to be

01:10:03

Christians, but they never were. And so they will plague the church. The reality is, unfortunately, we have big issues in our culture today with sexual predators.

01:10:16

And the one place that sexual predators prey on the most is churches. They fake it.

01:10:21

Why? Because people in churches are typically going to be more trusting. They know that.

01:10:26

And that's why they will appeal to that. And you can see that they're going to, I guess this is back to the other question more than this one.

01:10:32

But, you know, I always find it interesting that homeless always have signs that say, God bless you. They always want to appeal to the

01:10:39

Christian. Why? Because they know the Christian is going to be more caring in that way. So the reality is that predators go to church.

01:10:49

It's the reason churches need to be taking our seminar that we have for identifying sexual predators that we have a seminar we do at Striving Fraternity.

01:10:59

We have one of Georgia's leading experts as our speakers. And so because the reality is that we know it's a praying around for them.

01:11:08

They will pretend to be a Christian. I knew a guy in my church for three years pretended to be a Christian just because he wanted to date a woman.

01:11:14

Once it was announced that she was married, she went back to the bar, went back to where he used to work. And he said, I was faking it just because I want to get a girl.

01:11:21

So, yeah, there are people who pretend there's people who are self deceived. And yes, some even get into positions of leadership.

01:11:28

I know many pastors who got saved in the pastorate so that it's clear that they weren't saved before they saved, meaning they were converted into Christianity.

01:11:38

You're not born a Christian. So when we see bad things happen within the church, it's going to be one of two things.

01:11:46

It's either false converts, people who are hypocrites and faking it, or you have people that are exactly what is the entrance into a church.

01:11:56

The entrance into church is saying, I'm a sinner. So if people act like a sinner, that happens. Really, the hypocrites are those that are in the world saying they're a good person, and yet they sin.

01:12:08

OK, so go ahead. You finish, Andrew. Yeah.

01:12:14

OK, Steve, you have any comments there? The original question was, what do you have to say about, like,

01:12:20

Christians that act badly, basically? Yeah, yeah. Christians act badly and how we argue for secular humanism better than Christianity.

01:12:28

You know, a lot of that, a lot of the argument is, well, people within a body or within the church are misbehaving.

01:12:35

You know what I mean? So, yeah, I mean, that's a dumb argument. I mean, as was brought up, you could have people that are

01:12:41

Christians that are not really Christians. I mean, geez, I went to so much Catholic schooling, like I could give really well -prepared answers to this as well.

01:12:49

I mean, you know, just because somebody sins doesn't necessarily mean they're a bad person. You know, sin can be a reflection of the original sin we all inherit at birth.

01:12:56

You know, God gives us the path or the way to act in a righteous manner. We don't always choose to do that. That doesn't make us worse people.

01:13:01

God can still save us. We can still recognize the wrongdoers. There's like a million different ways to address that topic. When advocating for secular humanism over religious beliefs, this is kind of sort of related,

01:13:12

I guess, like the biggest thing that a lot of secular humanists miss is that religion does provide like a lot of structure that is incredibly beneficial that for some reason secular people totally miss out on.

01:13:23

So, for instance, there's a lot of rituals associated with religion. So that might be going to a particular place and, you know, talking about life and reaffirming, you know, everybody's existence every

01:13:31

Sunday or Saturday, you know, depending on which flavor of religion you follow. That's an important ritual that a lot of religious people have.

01:13:37

Maybe there should be something like that for secular people. Acts of charity and community building that a lot of religious organizations take part in different communities related to schools.

01:13:45

I went to private religious schools. I mean, that's something that can be really valuable. Yeah. Outside of like the supernatural claims that religions make, there's a lot of structural value there that secular people could probably borrow from instead of ceding it all of it to religious territory.

01:13:59

And yeah, I'd say that secular people could focus on that going forward, like to give somebody something to replace the rituals that they lose once they leave any type of religious establishment, to give them something else to kind of latch on to.

01:14:09

Okay. And this is my final question. What would be the one thing that separate that? What would be the one thing,

01:14:15

Andrew, that would separate Christianity from secular humanism? What would be the one outstanding aspect that says that this is why

01:14:24

Christianity is superior to secular humanism? Well, I would say it's superior because it's true ultimately, but it's also superior in the definitions that Stephen had given in the fact that we see in the accounts of morality, in every account, people behave better when they know they're accountable to God.

01:14:48

And so when you compare to how we treat our fellow man, it's superior. When you're going to compare to being able to account for how we do science, it's superior.

01:14:59

When we look at the science, I'm going to say it's superior. But Christianity is not about science, which is what this kind of debate was more seeming like it was about, was kind of how

01:15:12

Christianity almost versus science and not secular humanism. So I would argue if someone lives out secular humanism, every study shows it's not going to be superior.

01:15:26

And in fact, the article I quoted, their conclusion is we have to pretend basically there's a

01:15:32

God, we have free will. Christianity is there because otherwise people don't behave well.

01:15:39

Okay. Steve, what you got? So the original question is what is the one way you can say your thing is superior?

01:15:46

What is the one thing that you think of that makes secular humanism superior to Christianity?

01:15:53

Well, I mean, I would give obviously the same answer he gave. I would say that mine is true. I think that there are more verifiable claims that mine makes that requiring any kind of supernatural beliefs or any kind of like superstition.

01:16:05

I don't think that any of the investigations that we do today in medicine or biology would ever require any type of supernatural or superstitious belief.

01:16:12

And I would prefer to keep it that way. It's really scary when people start doing science and they bring religion into it. We could see like a lot of weird things happen.

01:16:18

We've seen that historically happen. And yeah, so I mean, I would give that. Okay. So Steve, I want to say one thing, but that's not true, right?

01:16:30

See, Christians do medical things. Christians do science. When you say, well, you don't need a belief in God, that's true.

01:16:38

And you don't need a belief in evolution either. You don't need a belief in secular humanism either.

01:16:43

So that's not part of the argument would be my thing. It's not part of the argument to say, well, we can do this and you can't.

01:16:50

Yes, but we do those things. And therefore, it's not a valid argument. So my challenge to you would be, if you're going to make a case, one's being superior than the other, there has to be an apples to apples because both can do the same science.

01:17:04

And to go to the extremes, if you're going to go to like Jehovah Witnesses and things like that with medical,

01:17:11

I'm going to agree with you, right? We're going to have a lot of agreement because they take a wrong view of what scripture says.

01:17:17

They do it out of a cult system and therefore, they're going to come to conclusions that do harm people.

01:17:24

But that's not Christianity. I guess the thing is

01:17:31

I'm saying is that you have to see that Christians can do science just without, with the claims you're saying, well, you have to bring supernatural into everything.

01:17:43

You could do the same science without bringing all the secular humanism in too. Therefore, it's not a comparison.

01:17:50

That's just a thought for you. I mean, I guess if I spin around, if you can answer me how you know that divine truth is being revealed to you by actually

01:18:01

God and not a demon, there's no answer to that question. Sure there is.

01:18:07

Sure there is. He's revealed it. We have an objective way to compare. We can look at scripture, 40 different authors over 1 ,500 years, no contradictions.

01:18:16

Now, here's the thing. You want to use science to be the determining factor for things that are supernatural or immaterial.

01:18:25

This is the problem. Science is a study of the material world. So, it cannot, you set up an impossible situation.

01:18:34

Your situation would be, if I was to turn to you and say, prove to me that your worldview exists,

01:18:46

I'm trying to think of a good example of it, because basically what you want to do is you want to use, well, here,

01:18:53

I'll use the example I always give. I want you to tell me how many feet eight gallons of water weighs.

01:19:00

Can you do that? Well, no, because these two things describe different properties.

01:19:06

Exactly. But I will also point out once more that you can't answer the question. So, when I ask you, how do you know divine revelation is real?

01:19:13

You start talking to me about divine revelation. So, you'll say like, oh, well, the Bible says that. I was like, well, how do you know that's real?

01:19:18

Well, because it says it's real. No, I didn't know. You can't answer that question. I've answered this several ways.

01:19:24

One, God's made it, he reveals it to everybody. I've given you the fact that we can objectively examine the fact that 40 authors can give over 1 ,500 years without contradiction descriptions of God.

01:19:39

We can look at the fact that there's prophecies given years ahead of time, 750 years sometimes, sometimes even more, of detailed prophecies that were filled not only in Scripture, but some were fulfilled by men like Alexander the

01:19:53

Great. So, it's never mentioned as a fulfillment. And yet, very detail is the fulfillment.

01:19:59

So, I could appeal to all those things. So, it has been answered. You seem to ignore the answer and say, well, it can't be answered.

01:20:07

The thing you're doing is a category error. You want me to scientifically prove that God exists.

01:20:15

Category error. So, if you want to know why I can trust the Bible is God's word?

01:20:20

Because God is not a liar. Therefore, God's not going to lie when he reveals it.

01:20:26

The fact that we can objectively examine it, see the number of authors with no contradiction over years, the fact that we can have prophecy.

01:20:33

You can't even have prophecy. You can't even have proper predictions within the science that secular humanists do, because they end up going up.

01:20:41

Nope, we concluded there was one singularity. Nope, that's mathematically impossible. Well, there was Christians that said it was mathematically impossible years ago.

01:20:48

But now, they wouldn't accept that until they had some other way to explain it.

01:20:54

That's called confirmation bias. That's not truth. Okay. I mean, we could go.

01:20:59

I mean, we're like bringing up the whole debate again. I mean, the only thing I'll say is it's really funny to say that I'm engaged in a confirmation bias.

01:21:06

But you literally say, well, I know God is being truthful to me, because by my own definition, God would never lie. I mean, if that's not the definition of confirmation bias,

01:21:13

I don't know what is. I'm saying that if you don't first accept God as the creator of the universe, you can't explain anything.

01:21:23

You can't explain your ability to read. You just appeal to, well, we can't know these things. They're just chemical reactions.

01:21:28

But you can't explain that. But yet, it's a core part of your belief system. For your worldview to be true, these things have to be able to be shown materially.

01:21:37

You can't do that. And you have to explain how the universe could, yeah, how the universe exists.

01:21:45

All right. Are we good? But thanks. I do appreciate, you know, I appreciate the time, man.

01:21:52

Yeah, I do too. I hope that you enjoyed that debate. I hope that you found something educational about it.

01:21:58

I hope it helped you in your ability to answer the challenges that we get as Christians.

01:22:03

Because we do get challenged. This is something that you see that this gentleman had some arguments.

01:22:10

I don't think they were very good. But I really, to be honest with you, was a little upset. I prepared a lot of stuff on slavery, on the, basically the, what they would say, genocide of people, because that's usually where they go.

01:22:25

We never even got there, because this guy really wasn't a good debate. So if there's anyone who would like to debate this same topic, secular humanism is superior to Christianity, I'm here.

01:22:37

I'm ready. We have a show, Apologetics Live, every Thursday night, 8 p .m.

01:22:42

to 10 p .m., Thursday nights on ApologeticsLive .com.

01:22:48

It's set up there. If you want to come in there, ask any theological question. That's what we're there for.

01:22:55

But if you want to have some debates, we're ready for you. So join us there. We just hope that you guys would consider, again, it's, we have the trip to Israel.

01:23:06

Consider going to 2021israeltrip .com and join us there. I will say this, there are going to be some really, really cool contests going on in the

01:23:17

Christian Podcast Community. Go to christianpodcastcommunity .org. There's going to be a contest.

01:23:22

It is going to have a ton of ways to enter, and we're giving away over 750 ,000 resources, theological and evangelism resources.

01:23:33

You don't want to miss that. You want to win that, trust me. So until next week, strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

01:23:44

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:23:53

We're all looking for ways to reduce energy usage and keep our homes comfortable this season and every season.

01:23:59

One way is to take advantage of incentives on high efficiency natural gas heating equipment from National Grid.

01:24:05

If your equipment is getting older, think about making the switch to a newer model because saving energy means saving money.

01:24:11

Exclusive incentives up to $2 ,000 are available now for energy -saving furnaces, boilers, and more.

01:24:18

Learn more at ngrid .com slash ma dash gas heating. Do you know how old your water heater is?

01:24:25

If it's 10 to 15 years old, it may be time to switch to the savings, comfort, and reliability of a new high efficiency model.

01:24:33

Nobody wants to experience a breakdown. So if your equipment is getting near the end of its lifespan, now is a great time to make the switch.

01:24:41

Take advantage of National Grid's incentives and save up to $550 on select natural gas water heaters.