Atheist SLAMS Christian.. & Has A Point?! | Pastor Reacts

The Fool Says There Is No God and the Christian Response

What did he say? A fool says in his heart there is no God.

Well, I think it didn't happen. I think it's nonsense.

What a wonderful opportunity to explore the inner workings of the atheist worldview, but all of that gets set aside because this Christian decided to get up and quote the Psalms. Is this verse telling you how to act towards others?

Did he say, so that when they may hear you call them an idiot and then get embarrassed, and then they'll give glory to their Father in heaven? No, that's not what he said. We've looked at Peter Boghossian before on this channel.

He is a well-known atheist who went so far as to write a manual for creating atheists, and now he slams a Christian for acting like a woke person? And here's the thing. I think he's right. How is it even possible that an get the upper hand in this exchange?

Stay tuned because we're about to get into it. If you're new here, welcome to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate, and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that you were meant to be. Before I jumped into this ministry, I was a pastor and a debate teacher for a number of years, and so it is from that experience that I make these videos.

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For that is below. No empirical phenomenon would change my mind. So Lawrence Krauss, the physicist who's a buddy of mine, has this thing. So you walk outside, and you look in the sky, and it says, I am God.

Believe in me. Would that be enough? And literally everybody sees it, and you haven't been dropping acid. For me, the answer to that would be no, and it would be no because you'd have to be able to rule out other alternative possibilities, time travelers, trickster alien cultures, et cetera, and because we can't do that, so it couldn't be phenomenon.

It couldn't be anything internal. It couldn't be a feeling state. Why couldn't it be a feeling state? Because people who have different God beliefs have different feeling states, or claim to feel the presence of something, their God, that has very different moral pronouncements and pronouncements.

Yes, sir. So up to this point,.

What Would Count as Evidence for Belief in God?

Boghossian is unpacking something that I actually find to be incredibly interesting, right? That is, what would it take for someone like him, who it seems to me he's an atheist, right? What would it take for him to believe in God?

That is an interesting question, because we get into these kinds of discussions sometimes as believers engaging the world for Christ, right? But the criteria for the evidence that is acceptable to believe in God is never truly delineated, never fully explained, not clear at all, and whether that's, I don't know, on purpose or not, the point is, if there is no clear criteria for belief, then there will never be belief, right?

I think it was, was it Dillahunty who was confronted with this question on a number of occasions, right? Folks asked him what it would take for him to believe, what would count as evidence given his position?

He has no idea. And it sounds like Boghossian was tracking along the same lines. It can't be that there's communication written in the sky, you know, okay. It can't be a change in feeling states, okay.

Well, then what would count? This is one of those fundamental questions that gets at the heart of the issue, and I wish that he would have been able to explore that more. But instead, a Christian gets up and says this.

What did he say?

A fool says in his heart there is no God. Well, I think it didn't happen. I think it's nonsense.

Well, that's it. So, again, what a wonderful opportunity to explore the inner workings of the atheist worldview, and to hear someone like Boghossian, who is incredibly intelligent and articulate, expound on that, right?

But all of that gets set aside because this Christian decided to get up and quote the Psalms. Psalm 14, verse 1, the fool says in his heart there is no God, okay. They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does good.

This is the word of the Lord, and it is absolutely true. But what does this verse actually tell you as a Christian? Have you ever thought about that? I mean, it certainly communicates something, right?

But what specifically is it telling you? Let me ask the question in a different way. Is this verse telling you how to act towards others? Is this a verse commanding you to act a certain way towards fools?

Or is this a verse telling you something else, right? I'm curious to get your thoughts on this one, by the way. Let me know in the comments, and let's discuss it. Because if the answer is, Nate, this is a verse telling me how to act towards others, put your finger on the word or phrase that specifically tells you that, because I don't see it.

What I do see, though, is a diagnosis of the human condition. But what I do not see is a game plan for how to talk to non-believers. Now, here's another question, okay? Are there passages of the Scripture that tell you how to act towards non-believers?

Yes, there are. Colossians chapter 4, verse 5. By the way, real quick, I almost never talk about the merch attached to Wise Disciple, but this verse was the basis for a t-shirt that I created over at the store.

Take a look at this. Yep, it's the Wise Disciple word series, and as you can see, it has a picture of words being salted, and then on the bottom, Colossians 4, 5, and 6, where the verse lives. So I created the designs for all the t-shirts and everything on the store, and I thought, man, that was a good reminder of the issue that we struggle with in today's culture.

We seem to struggle with knowing what it really looks like to season our words with salt, and I think this is a good example of that, so that we know how we ought to answer each person. Hey, real quick, I hope this video is blessing you.

Would you do me a favor and like and subscribe to the channel? It really does help me to get this video out to more and more people. I really do appreciate it. Titus chapter 3, verse 2. This is why Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount, Did He say, so that when they may hear you call them an idiot and then get embarrassed, and then they'll give glory to their Father in Heaven?

No, that's not what He said! The fact is, the commands given to us in the Bible look more like Philip talking to the Ethiopian eunuch, or even Paul talking to the Greeks, to the Areopagus, as opposed to Psalm 14, 1.

Again, like, is that what Paul did in Acts chapter 17? Did he get up in front of everyone and say, men of Athens, you know, I see that you're very dumb, because you believe in your heart that there is no God.

No, this is what he said. 17, verse 22. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. He affirmed their religiosity in order to use it as a springboard to talk about the God of the so that you know how you ought to answer each person.

Boghossian’s Critique of Personal Attacks

I think that this gentleman in the audience thought that he was doing something good, but what he did was he set himself up for this.

It's interesting, because look what you just did. You went from—so this is very interesting. Let's linger on this for a moment, because it's very interesting. So you went from calling me nonsense—you made a claim that I call the claim nonsense.

You took the claim and went from the claim being nonsense to a personal attack on me. Okay, well, I can quote J .R .R. Tolkien or anything, that doesn't make it true. One's ability to quote something doesn't make it true.

So what you just did is adopt many of the tactics of woke people by attempting to disrupt, by attempting to dismantle. So you're adopting the tactic—you're becoming what you hate,.

A kind of thuggery. Okay, I know a lot of you are getting your dander up, but does Peter Boghossian have a point? I believe something that is going to make a lot of you upset. I believe that God can use an atheist to say something true.

The atheist probably has no idea that he's affirming what the Scripture teaches, but nevertheless, we can confirm this is in the The Apostle Paul wrote about this very issue. Actually, believe it or not, he wrote about this very issue in 2 Corinthians 10.

You know what he said? He said something right in line with Boghossian. Watch this. Verse 3, For though we walk in the flesh, we're not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. Did Paul say that we destroy people? That when we stand before non-believers, we need to let them have it in the name of Christ?

Just, you know, slap them upside the head with the Bible? Is that what Paul said? No, he said we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised up against the knowledge of God, and then we take the people who have been using these very arguments and have these unbiblical opinions, and we lead them out of their own mental prisons and into the obedience of Christ.

That's how we do it, ladies and gentlemen, and what's amazing is Boghossian understands. He understands this to a degree. He just highlighted that he, you know, he focused his comments on the idea, on the belief, and the man who quoted the Bible, he focused his comments on the individual.

This is exactly how many liberals argue, by the way. Progressives, woke people, they don't focus on the strength of their arguments. They seek to destroy and to demean the person they're talking to. Boghossian is right.

It's amazing. This is not the way, ladies and gentlemen, to engage non-believers. There is a more effective way. By the way, that's how this plays out. Another Christian steps in and tries a different approach.

I'm not talking to you. If you want to talk afterwards, I might, but this is not a conversation in which you are no longer involved.

The question is, what do you base your morality on?

Yeah, okay, so that's a great question, and that would be an example of how to ask a question in.

A civil way without attacking a person, and I think... It's true. That's the way you do it. Ask pointed questions, do it with gentleness and respect, and get the person to wrestle with their own worldview.

And when they display the qualities of someone who is genuinely seeking truth, tell them what you know to be true from your Christian convictions. If you've seen any of my previous videos on this same subject, then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

This is an approach that stands on top of Proverbs 9, Colossians 4, 2 Corinthians 10, Acts 17, Titus chapter 3, 1 Corinthians 13, you know, Matthew 5, right? Particularly in 5, the last several verses, right?

Verses 43 to 48. You could arguably pay attention to the entire Sermon on the Mount for this, because it's all over the place in the Scripture, and we have to take it seriously, ladies and gentlemen. If we are going to obey the Lord and what the Lord tells us to do in His Word, you have to pay attention to this.

I actually think the best thing that could have happened was just to let Boghossian finish his original thought, and then just ask him some follow-up questions to get him to perhaps confront the liabilities from his particular worldview.

I think that's the best way to live out the spirit of 2 Corinthians 10 .5. But now it's your turn. What do you think about this whole exchange? I'm curious about this one, guys, right? Who's upset? Who agrees?

Let me know in the comment below. What's your take on the Bible's teaching in this area, right? Like, you know, how should we be seasoning our words with salt? Let me know as well. Did Boghossian even have a point, right?

Just let me have it in the comments. I'd love to get your thoughts. As always, if you made it this far, you need to join me in the Patreon community. We're reading the Bible together, and that's totally for free.

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