Keep sharing good news without ads.
Post-debate discussion on Andrew's debate on the topic of Is Secular Humanism Superior to Christianity?
All right, we are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your questions, challenges, whatever you may have for us. If you want to join in the discussion, go to ApologeticsLive .com and you can get the links to join right there.
We are going to be putting this out on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, but the comments don't always come in from those different places. I think I can only get from YouTube and Facebook, some of the Facebook places, and some Twitter.
But yeah, so if you want me to see any comments so we can put them in, well, then make sure you go to YouTube and watch it there, or just go to ApologeticsLive .com. That is the link that has the show where you can watch it as well.
What we're going to do, I'm going to jump in quickly because I want to bring in my friend here, Marlon Wilson. He was the moderator for the debate that we're going to be discussing today. You've done a number of debates on your Gospel Truth Show.
So you got, I think you still have one coming up with Dr. Silvestro, correct? Yes, I do.
He's going to be debating Michael O 'Keefe. I believe that's his name, Michael O 'Keefe, and they're going to be debating the Old Testament, Younger's Creation, and they're going to be debating the Morality in the Bible, should I say.
All right, well, that'll be a fun one to watch. Unfortunately for folks, if they're watching on YouTube, they get to see the mess that is called my office. Usually I get a camera that zooms in a little bit closer so you don't see all of the mess.
So I'll just keep my hands like this all the time so that no one sees. Kind of like the Wizard of Oz, don't mind the man behind the curtain. So let's talk, because I know you got a very important thing coming up in about half an hour.
And so you're going to have to skedaddle. You got a soccer game. Yep. A soccer game that's that important? No, it's Who's Soccer Game, isn't it? That's what it is, man. Who's Soccer Game it is, man. Always.
Now there's this question, everyone's like, who is it? Should we tell them the famous person whose game you're going to watch?
My little lady, Janiyah.
You're going to think someone like you're going to watch a professional player or something, but no. You got a soccer game with your daughter to go be at. So real quick, let's talk about the debate that I had.
We had a debate. We had a debate on your channel, the topic. I had to look over at his name. Stephen Bonnell was his name. And the debate was, is secular humanism superior to Christianity? Because I've been saying, did he choose that topic or was that one that you chose and you gave it to him and then contacted him?
Yeah, if I remember correctly, I chose a topic and I threw it at him and he said, sure. And then that's when I took it to you to see if you would be ready to go for it. You said, sure. And that's when you jumped on there and said, man, it's about to be a slaughter, man.
It's over, man. It's already on before it started.
I like what Andy Foreham had said on Facebook there. He said, Andrew, we won the debate with the topic. Pre-assumes the ultimate standard, which cannot exist in atheism. So I think he nailed it. It was like, I was like, really?
You want to debate this topic? Okay.
Yeah, he did. He jumped right on it and said, you know, let's do it. I was like, okay. All right. If that's what you want, you know, if that's what you want, go with it. Hey, you know, you got to take what you get though, man.
You just got to take it, man.
Look, I actually, let me ask you this. Have you, has you gotten any response? What I was really hoping was a response that you were going to get was that some professing atheist was going to watch this debate and be like, man, I, this guy did so bad.
I got to debate him that same topic. Because I think you and I both agreed he wasn't a very good debater. Yeah.
I think to answer your first question, I didn't get any response saying that, that, you know, that he wanted to give you a shot and anything, but I'm sure that'll come down the road. But as far as Steven and his preparation and I just think that it seems like he woke up and just threw his shirt on and jumped into it, you know, and I'm kind of like, come on, man, you know, you're going on a show.
You know, somebody invited you on a show, at least have the courtesy enough to, you know, sort of get yourself together, prepare yourself some, you know what I mean? So it just seemed like he was just out of it.
Like he didn't, like he didn't prepare, so to speak, if that makes sense.
It, well, it seemed like he was distracted. I was joking because he said he's a gamer. I thought maybe he was playing games and we'll let folks watch this to see, but he definitely seemed distracted. Yeah.
It seemed like he didn't even want to be there.
Yeah. It seemed like it was, you know, we I reached out to Steven about two months prior to you guys debate. And, you know, when doing that, you know, there's an expectation that comes with it. You expect them to be like, OK, you know, plenty of time preparation.
And we expect them to come in and really desire to be there. You know what I mean? Desire to participate. You know, it's disappointing that when somebody agrees to something and then our hearts they seem to not want to be there.
You know what I mean? And not really want to do it. Yeah. I mean, and folks, we may end up playing the full debate. I'll definitely have a link for this debate that you can go watch it on Gospel Truth.
But the thing that got me with this was when he went in, I mean, right from the opening he had, I'll have to time it because opening seemed like it was a four minute opening. Yeah, it was. It was really quick.
Yeah, I was. Yeah, it was really quick. And I think that just shows the care that he put into it. You know what I mean? It's unfortunate. But even though he did not put much effort into it, I still feel that you took care of business, though.
You represented well, though.
I tried. I mean, I think it's kind of easy with that topic. I mean, I was actually hoping some professing atheist was like, reached out to you and like, Marlon, man, I got to debate this guy on that topic.
People see someone do bad, like my debate I had with the Black Hebrew Israelite. Everyone was like, they start reaching out to me like, I'll debate you because that guy did so bad. I do better. Okay, here's show up to Apologetics Live.
Yeah. Don't show up.
It's all good, though. It's all good. I'm sure it's come running in and come running in real quick, though. Don't worry.
Yeah. So if folks want to chime in, go to ApologeticsLive .com. There's links to join. You can join us here and join in the discussion as we play through it. We're just going to stop it wherever it needs to be stopped if we want to.
And so that's how we're going to do tonight is a post debate discussion. Now, some of the things before you go, because I know you're going to want to take up most of the time with you. With this debate specifically, we already mentioned it seemed like he didn't want to be there.
It seemed like he was distracted. It's funny because you kind of said he looked like he threw a shirt on, just showed up like maybe he was up late gaming all night. I don't know. You've actually had a number that was commented to Eli.
It's like, what is it with all these gamers that just they think they could do philosophy? No idea, man. No idea, man. Get a job. I don't know. Right. Because the guy that Eli debated was like, this is what I do full time.
And I was like, really? Like, OK, I do gaming and YouTube. Right. Right. Kind of interesting. I'll use the term interesting. It wasn't a career path when I was a kid. I know that. Either one of them. Right.
Right. So with this debate, when you think about all the debates you've set up, you've set up a lot of good debates. I kind of felt even as someone that would watch it, almost disappointed. Yeah. It seemed like only it didn't seem like both of us were as prepared.
Yeah.
I just see. I think I think part of it is just a seriousness. You know what I mean? Like, you obviously take the craft of apologetics serious. You know, this is something that God has blessed you with.
So this is a gift. And it seems as though when Stephen jumped in there, it just seemed that he doesn't take it serious. You know what I mean? These are engaging. Even if we disagree, obviously, we disagree.
You know, there are. This is an engaging aspect. This is something that everybody's going to see. This is something that's going to be on live in front of the worldwide audience, essentially. You know, we thought on YouTube and stuff like that.
So there's an aspect of a sincerity and seriousness that you take with this. And we just didn't see that from Stephen. And that's why his appearance and that's why his presentation failed.
Yeah, I think even if you think about, you know, we had on this show, we had a debate with Ken Cook and Rob Barnhart. And, you know, it was Rob's very first time debating. So you see some things that it's like, OK, it's because he's not used to being in a debate.
He got emotional at one point. It's like that that happens. I've done that in my debates. But this wasn't this guy's first debate.
Yeah, it wasn't. And I think I think I think it's probably some confidence, overconfidence, arrogance there. You know what I mean? It's just like, man, you know, and I'm this is me behind. I'm listening to you guys interact.
Right. And I'm getting because the whole idea of the gospel truth is to put a presentation out there to make sure that this presentation is good, that it's God glorifying and it's good. You know what I mean?
So when I invite people on, I expect them to be prepared. You know, so I'm behind. I'm listening to you guys interact. And I'm just like rolling my eyes. I'm frustrated. I'm irritated. You know what I mean?
Because this is something this is a Christian platform. And with everything with a Christian platform, I want this platform to be on point. And whenever people come on and they don't do they don't do what I expect, you know, it's irritating.
It's frustrating. I mean, look, you're setting up a bunch of debates, a bunch of good debates. And they're educational. Debates are somewhat entertaining. Granted, there's there's that aspect. I mean, that's on that's part of a debate.
I understand. But you want it to be educational. You want to be informative. That's that's the purpose of a debate. And, you know, what you end up seeing in this is that this wasn't a it wasn't a good debate.
I felt bad in the debate because I'm like, OK, granted, he didn't lose the debate. I jokingly said online is really kind of interesting. I jokingly said online after we did the debate and you aired it.
I put the link and I said, I actually didn't need to show up to the debate to win. I mean, he he demolished his own view. It's opening and his opening was only like three, four minutes long. Yeah. Didn't even realize he did it.
But he did such, you know, and this is the this is the thing. It's not I don't want this to come off as insulting to the guy. It's just that I watched him in a previous debate because you send me a link to a previous debate.
He did. He's he's done a couple of them. I didn't know. I think you nailed it in. And this is the same thing I thought. I think he was just so arrogant in his argumentation because his argumentation was like, I'm right.
Yeah, that's basically what it was. And if you also notice. Wow. He totally tried to undercut the format of the debate. I mean, that is like, OK, I sent you and him a copy of the format, like the proposed format that we're going to do.
And instead of following the format, he, you know, what the format was so that. OK, so the format was 10 minute openings from both parties. And then we had about a 60 minute discussion, cross examination session, 10 minutes per person for a total of 30 minutes each.
And so what he did instead of cross examining you and asking you questions, he took 20 minutes of his 30 minutes and did rebuttal rebuttal rounds. You know, and I'm like, come on, man. You know, I know you don't believe what we believe.
I know you don't respect us. I know you don't respect my show. I know you lack respect for Andrew. But do don't come on here. You know, just disrespect is super disrespectful, you know, to come in and undercut a format of a host that invited you on his show.
OK, so let's so we do the opening doesn't do full opening the the cross examination. You and I ended up sending you a text privately just saying, OK, he's doing a rebuttal. What do you want me to do? Should I do a rebuttal?
You're like, yeah, I guess do a rebuttal. And then you explain to him what a cross examination is, which I think the way you did it was pretty gracious. You explained it to him. Hey, this is what it is.
And then he goes back into a rebuttal. And I'm like, what do you want me to do? Because I have all these questions I want him to answer.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I jumped in and I was like, OK, this is what we're going to do. We're going to give you a rebuttal round. We're going to let you have a rebuttal. I'm going to let Andrew have a rebuttal and then we're going to go into the to the cross.
He goes back to a rebuttal. Yeah. You start asking questions and then the next round we did a cross. But I think, you know, to me, and this kind of plays into what you were saying with the arrogance thing.
To me, it seemed as if he wanted a monologue.
And if that's what he wanted, if that's what he wanted and he didn't want if he wanted just a conversation between you two, you know what I mean? And just something where there's nobody interrupting, nothing of that nature.
I think we both would have been like, OK, no problem. No problem. I mean, I would just let you guys talk for 60 minutes. I don't even think he wanted me to talk, period. Yeah. He just wanted to filibust the whole thing.
You know, it's absolutely silly.
Look, cross examination is probably one of the most important parts of any debate. Anytime you watch a debate, the cross examination, it's where it's where one person puts the screws to another person.
Right. It's like I feel the pressure. You know, like, what do I do here? That's what you're going to get in a cross examination. Yeah. And so it was strange because like there's no cross examination.
What are we going to do? And that's I think that was a major. I think that was obviously the major frustration. First, he shows up apparently unprepared. Then his open statement. You know, I'm not really tripping over the statement.
You know, I sort of be kind of gracious when it comes to that. You know, if you open the statements five minutes, if it's 10 minutes, go for it. You know what I mean? It is what it is. But the cherry on top of the sundae is when he just undercut the whole format and just did two rebuttal rounds.
You know, I just kind of like, man, this is not the desired way of doing things for this. This platform, because I really want people to learn the arguments of the atheistic position. You know, I want him to ask you questions.
So my audience can look at you up and say this is as a believer. This is how I am to respond to an atheist when they make this particular argument. You know what I mean? And unfortunately, you didn't get the full amount of time to make those rebuttals because he chose to take.
Two rounds and use that as a rebuffer of your argument.
I just was actually OK with the one round of a rebuttal because I didn't mind doing the rebuttal. I mean, it's hard to rebut his opening statement when it was so short. But yeah, the the actually the interesting thing I I'll give you this and people can play this as we play it.
They can watch this and maybe you'll you'll get the insight of my brain as I was thinking. But he did his opening and it was so short. I was actually sitting there going, wait a minute, because he's setting me up.
I know he's done debates before and there are people that play do tactics in debates. And so you just got to know that. So here's the thing I was actually thinking, because I was expecting whenever we debate this topic, I was all prepared on the slavery arguments.
I had all my arguments laid out. I'm like, OK, you know, I got I'm prepared to address slavery, the killing of Canaanites and all that. Like there's answers to these things that the atheists don't like.
And I'm like, OK, I'll be ready to give the answers because that's going to be he's going to make this moral argument, which, you know, it's like once he does that, he's trapped because I'm going to do presuppositional apologetics.
I do the presupp anyway because he's making claims for worldview and it's like, whoops, no, he can't be lost.
Don't have a foundation for it, brother. Can't do it.
He was just like it was like he's like just going, well, science is better than than religion. I'm like apple and oranges. You don't like as a Christian, I can do science.
Yeah, I think if I can make it stay real quick, he said it was one thing he said in every boat around. I wrote a guy says that any idea that we can gather, any time we can gather ideas is going to be better than more superior to Christianity.
In other words, he was saying that the way I took it was that he said that if you're a Christian, you're just taking the faith as for as it is. You're not analyzing it. There's no analyzing the Christian faith.
What are you talking about? You know, he's undermining the intellectual aspect of the Christian faith. You know, and I think that is, once again, ridiculous. And that just shows that he doesn't understand the construct of the Christian faith.
You know what I mean? So, you know, my response would be like, you know, he's assuming that the Christian doesn't analyze. He also assuming that his standard is true, that he has a standard of truth, that he has a foundation upon which his standard of truth is on.
And we know that the atheistic position just simply is not the case. You know what I mean?
Yeah, and this is this is what I thought. Same thing you just said. He just he made his claim and then was begging the question. Sure. Let me bring. Let's see. This is a low keel brought you into discussion here.
Well, here, baby crying in the background. I don't know if you have anything you wanted to add before we play the debate.
Oh, sorry. I didn't know this was this was just on right away. I'd have to argue the whole claim that Christianity would be intellectually supported in a sense. I mean, first off, you have the Bible, right?
OK, you read the Bible, you read through the Bible, you find conflicts from gospel gospel. OK, then you have to choose what you want to take seriously. Hold on. The gospel is contradicting each other means you have to.
You can't take them all seriously. Luke Luke Luke L compare that to three and find that. Hello. With history to Luke L. Luke L.
Can you hear me? Oh, yes. OK, so let me let me explain some to you. You talk about the different things of in the gospels and you're saying that proves that the that the Bible can't be true. It has you kind of indicate that you think it has contradictions.
Do you realize that if it didn't have different accounts of similar stories, it would not be eyewitness testimony? It would be manufactured. That's the thing.
It's not. As a matter of fact, John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, their honorary namings. Look, look out. Hold on. There is no eyewitness testimony. They're all hundreds of years after Jesus. It was a birth. OK, look out.
I mean, his supposed death. OK. Years after Luke L. No eyewitness testimony.
Luke L. Luke L. Are you there? Oh, yes. OK, so so let's try to break this down. So have you have you watched the have you watched any of the Democrat National Committee debates?
OK, let's see. Let's see. Well, back ago. So not the same thing as recently. Let's say you watched one.
Do you think that the New York Times reported on the debates? I mean, is this a simple question? Yeah. The New York Times did report on the debates, right? They're going to do that. They're a news agency, right?
I forget which news agency. It's a simple yes or no answer. That's all it is.
Yeah. The New York Times is going to report on the debates. Same with the New York Post and the Boston Times and the San Francisco Times and the Washington Post. They're all going to report on the debate, correct?
Well, I suppose so. Let's compare them. Let's compare them. There's similarities in all of the reporting, aren't there? Yeah. There's differences in all the reportings, aren't there?
Yeah, but we have proof. We have no proof that Jesus ever existed. As a matter of fact, we have proof that he didn't. OK, so here's the thing. Christianity isn't even original. I mean, the character of Jesus is clearly ripped off of much older figures.
I see what you're doing. You threw out a bunch of claims, none of which you—. All of them are substantiated.
Name one eyewitness, one eyewitness account of Jesus. We'll go from there. OK, sure. You want one eyewitness account. We can go with Peter. No, no. Something outside of the Bible. Oh. Someone outside of the Bible.
Because the Bible's honorary. It's completely honorary.
Well, this is the whole thing. So here's the thing. Let me set it up. So how about the Jewish writers of the Talmud? They're not. The Jewish writers of the Talmud. The Jewish writers of the Talmud. And yet, if you listen to my Rap Report Daily podcast that I put out, I think, today, or it's the one for tomorrow, I talk about this very question.
Because people make the claim Jesus never existed. Even Bart Ehrman, who's not a Christian, looks to argue against Christianity.
That's called an appeal to authority.
Bart Ehrman's just an expert in his field. So you can look at the Roman historians. You can look at the writers of the Bible because you wanted eyewitnesses.
That's what that is. You're also taking him out of context. Because while you can say that a character who inspired the character of Jesus does not support a claim, that any biblically compatible version of Jesus ever existed in a historical context, which is precisely what has proven to be falsified.
No biblically compatible version of Jesus ever existed in a historical context. Lakel, you asked for evidence. You have the Bible. You want to reject that. You have Josephus. You want to reject that. You have the Jewish writers of the Talmud.
You're going to reject that. No, no, no, no. You brought up Josephus. You brought up Josephus. Hey, hold on. We're putting him in the back room so he can calm down. He's not listening. He just ran off the band.
He's not listening. This is almost like Steve. He just wants to ramble and not actually have a discussion. And do you guys hear the superiority that he has? He just thinks he's right because he makes a claim.
This is how support works. He says there's no eyewitnesses. I give him eyewitnesses. He then just says, no, that doesn't count. So I give him other eyewitnesses that don't fit. He wants it out of the Bible.
Okay, here's some that are outside the Bible. Okay, this is how this works. And you support a claim. Here's why I give him the Talmud. And Marlon, I know you're going to have to get going because you got an important doctrine, but I'll wrap this up.
We'll say goodbye to you. We'll bring him in. We'll play the debate. So here's the way this works. The writers of the Talmud responded to Christ in the time of Christ. They even respond to the resurrection of Christ.
Okay, so what they want to do and what you're going to hear him do is go, oh, you mentioned Josephus. Let me throw that historical evidence out. So no matter what you give a person like this, and we'll bring him back in.
We'll watch him do this. No matter what evidence he has, he will throw out the evidence because he starts with a conclusion. This is what's called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when you only accept evidence that supports your conclusion.
And that's what you're going to see with him quickly because even Bart Ehrman, who's not a Christian, tries to discredit Christianity, writes a book saying that Jesus was never claimed to be God, but the disciples made him God in later writings.
He even says that it is absolute foolishness to say there was no evidence for a historical Jesus. Now he's going to say it was a different type of Jesus. We could debate that as well. But the reality is to make a claim there's no evidence is when people throw out all evidence.
So, Marlon, the later you get, the less before you've got to go.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, you look at the Romantastus, you know, you look at it, there's evidence out there that shows that Jesus Christ was actually a historical person. So, and it takes an extreme level of skepticism to reject the historicity of Christ.
I mean, a level of skepticism that would, that even learned historians don't hold on to. It's unfortunate that he has that view. And, you know, all we can do is just pray for him and continue to preach the gospel and tell people about the love of Christ.
All right. So real quick, before you go talk about your show, what do you got coming on? Then I'll bring Luke Hill back in.
All right. So, you know, if you guys got a chance, man, go over to the Gospel Truth on YouTube and on Facebook, you know, search my name, Gospel Truth Marlon Wilson, you know, check it out. Please like, follow, subscribe.
I got a whole bunch of debates. Actually, tomorrow at 6 p .m. Pacific Standard Time, I will be debating. I'll be debating Andrew Griffin. And we'll be debating, did Jesus need to be God in order to atone for sins?
But after that, we got a whole bunch of shows. I mean, a whole slew of shows all the way up to December, the end of December. So stay on the lookout. Please like and follow, share, subscribe, the whole nine.
May God be glorified in his platform. And Andrew Rappaport, God bless you and your ministry. Keep doing your thing.
All right. So who's going to be the moderator if you're doing the debate? I got my buddy. What's his name? Michael. I forget his name.
That's bad. I got my buddy. I can't remember his name now, man. He's going to be jumping on with me and he's going to be the moderator.
We'll edit that out of the podcast version. Don't worry. Yeah, definitely. It's all good. Hey, you got to get to a soccer game. Thanks for coming in. And we'll bring Luke Hill back in. All right. Be catching on gospel truth.
All right, for sure. Okay, Luke Hill. So let's see if we can walk through a couple of things before we play this debate and see how that goes. But so you made some claims. Let me first ask, what kind of eyewitness testimony would you accept?
Now, let me preface this. I want to know if you know who Jay goes by Jay Warner Wallace in his writings. But Jim Wallace, have you read his book, Cold Case Christianity?
In all honesty. No, I haven't. But I've read many other works. A matter of fact, I'm a student of Atari of sanding. Hold on.
We get it back and forth. So when I ask a question, it's like, it's not just taken. Jump off. Let me ask. Let me explain who he is and why I want you to get that book. Okay. Jim Wallace is a cold case detective, 20 years on the job.
His expertise is eyewitness testimony. He actually was reading the gospels to try to disprove the gospel. The same claim you're making. He wanted to prove that it wasn't good. Eyewitness testimony being an expert in the field, actually one of the leading experts.
He's been on Dateline and all this for his cold cases that he's done in L .A. Who goes through in that book and explains that what convinced him that the Bible was accurate was that it fits every case for what expert eyewitness testimony should look like.
The thing that proves it's wrong with the differences is exactly what you need in eyewitness testimony. I even gave you an example from today. If you were to look in any newspaper to any event that all the reporters were eyewitnesses to, they're going to talk about some differences and they're going to have similarities.
It doesn't mean that the false narrative that is portrayed is that all the gospels had to come from one source. Now, really quick, you mentioned that this comes from earlier religions.
I see you really want to be the one to do all the talking here. What's with that?
I mean. Well, I'm trying to answer all the things you did.
You arrogantly act as if you have all the answers and then cut me off. I mean, you claimed I was excited or something and needed to calm down.
So I think you were put in the back room.
Yes, because you wanted to silence me because it didn't fit your narrative. It's the way a professional debates.
This is the way if you want to debate me, I'm in debate. This is not. We didn't set up a debate. So if you expect that you came in debating me, well, then you came in thinking you were going to surprise me, son.
You started. Are you aware of the forgeries and interpolations with the Joseph account that have been proven? Yeah. So are you just going to push those under a rug and try to just drag everyone along with your cult beliefs?
Okay. So here's the thing. You asked for evidence and every piece of evidence you're trying to reject. Why don't you? What about the Talmud?
Check that. Look, when it comes to the Talmud. You haven't read it, have you?
You know why I bring the Talmud up? Because you're atheist. Don't have an answer to that because they don't think through those things. Okay. Because they come up with your can.
Admittedly, I'm a little rusty over these things. So I have read over that at one point or another, but more along the lines. I forgot. Have you watched? Remember when I said I was a student to Acharya Sanning?
Have you watched the movie Zeitgeist? I'm asking. Are you aware that Acharya Sanning was in that movie?
Okay. So I'm going to ask it again because I want to see if we can get an answer. Yes.
Are you aware of the Zeitgeist source?
Or you want to take things out of the report on the debates and you can't even answer that.
So yes, I have seen Zeitgeist. And I've also read early the Zeitgeist source book on that. You haven't read the Zeitgeist source. Actually, that's not true. You don't know what I've read. I did read it.
Have you read the Zeitgeist source book? And if so, who authored it? So now let's deal with it. I don't remember the author. I'm sorry.
So here's the question. The claim that it's based on an earlier work. Now, the one thing throughout the Zeitgeist movie and from the book is the similarity that you see is that Jesus is born on December 25th.
Everything is backed up in the Zeitgeist source. Just answer a simple question. It is written by DM Murdoch, Acharya Sanning.
So you've studied it, but you can't even answer a simple question.
What I'm saying is if you're asking questions about it to try and discredit it, then you haven't read the Zeitgeist source book. No, that's the difference. Similarly to how you haven't read the Bible enough to understand that it contradicts it.
We'll put him back in the background so I can explain why I'm asking him the questions. And we'll ask him. He came in in debate mode. He's, I guess, really the one that needs to calm down. Because here's the simple thing.
He's going to claim to be an expert on something. He can't answer a simple question. Was the Zeitgeist movie. There's two elements that you're going to see throughout that movie and its source materials.
There's two elements that they use to say that all of these ancient Egyptian claims of deity, all these religions are tying together to Christianity. One, the birth date of December 25th. Two, the term son, S-U-N and S-O-N.
Now we're going to ask him. He's watched these. He's said he's an expert on these. He studies this. Can he confirm that those two are mentioned? I'm not trying to discredit this movie and its source material.
I'm asking a simple question. So let's bring him back in. So is the one connection that you see with all of them, December 25th, and the reference to son?
The thing is you're taking that out of context. And once again, you're accusing me of being excited. And telling me I need to calm down. Okay.
We're going to put him back into it. We're going to see if he can actually answer simple questions. I'll ask the question again. I'm going to ask you guys to tell me if you think he answers. The question is very simple.
It's not a discrediting. It's not taking out of context. I'm not providing any context here. The question is, does this movie that he says he studied, do they make a reference with all of these arguments to December 25th and the name son?
So I'll try it again.
It's very simple. Yes, they do. But if you read the source book, you'll find that the Zeitgeist movie summarized what the source book contains the rest of the information on. Okay. It's easy to take out of context.
You're doing that. You're clearly showing you haven't read the source book. I'm not doing any of that. Why about reading the source book? Because if you actually name the author, dude, I look behind me.
You're a liar.
Oh, I'm a liar. You can prove that you're a Christian. Yeah.
You're a Christian. You're obviously, dude, I can't professional religious lying. Okay. What's your real name?
My real name. Yeah. Don't be a liar. Don't lie about your name. Be a man and kind of show who you are. Put your face on camera. I don't have my camera hooked up.
And you don't have a name, huh? Okay. So you know why a chariot standing? So let's put it.
Okay. Let me make it really simple for you.
Religious like you were threatening your life. Listen, no Christian.
No Christian. That means no Christian believes Jesus was born on December 29th. 25th. No one. Everybody knows that was not his birthday. So that right there is what?
You haven't read the source book. Read the source book.
Come back and be honest. That's all you got to do. When you look at the word S-U-N and S-O-N, that only works in English, not in Egyptian.
The source book covers this blunder.
You have an English argument. So you fell in prey and are deceived by a false. No. Yes.
Because you're believing. Okay. The inference, it's astro theological. Do you know what the word astro theological means? Let's see. Astronomy could be. I mean, it could be a lot of things. If you don't know what the word astro theology means, then you definitely haven't read the source book.
That is covered so much times. It just beats the dead horse. You don't even get about reading the source book. Astro theology is the study of. Astro theology is the study of. Okay. Astronomical definition.
Read the source. Translated via religion. Religions were inspired to write their stories. So you don't know the definition. You said that I'm a liar.
You just proved that you're a liar. That's wonderful. I love it. Thank you. What are you saying? Well, if your claim, not mine, your claim was that I lied because I don't know the author, because I've read hundreds of books.
I've probably read.
No, no, no. The absolute proof is that you're lying. Okay. You're suspected of lying first because you're an apologist. Apologists lie professionally. Secondly, you absolutely proved that you were lying when you did not know what astro theology meant.
Guys, if you're watching this, read the book. The Zeitgeist Sourcebook. Okay. The Zeitgeist is a horribly done movie. Okay.
And first of all, it's the same poor argument.
Really, you can take out context. You read the sourcebook and it makes sense. Okay. Well, I'll tell you what. I would love to have. Download online anytime. Truthbenown .com. Yeah.
Okay. So there we go. We just wanted to get in some promotion there. So we cut that out. So John, I'll bring you in real quick before we play this debate. If Lockell, who won't give his real name, if he wants to lie about his name, would like to come in and have a discussion, he's going to have to have self-control.
And we could do that. We did want to have a post-debate next week. If he wants to come in, come on in. Let's discuss it. But John disappeared. But I want to play through this debate that we had. And Lockell's going to have to learn how to have some self-control in having one topic.
He just throws a whole bunch out. But to say that I'm a liar just because I'm a Christian apologist. Folks, this is what we deal with. This is the level of intellectual discussion that we have to deal with because that is called poisoning the well.
It's a logical fallacy, which right there negates his argument. He probably doesn't study logic too much. So if folks want to come in and discuss the debate, come on in. I'm going to play through this debate.
We may just play the whole thing because time is now short. So let us bring this up and make sure that you guys will be able to hear this. And so the goal of this is to help you guys to see how this debate went, how to be able to respond to some of this stuff because what you end up seeing in this debate that we have is you're going to see, as we started saying earlier on with this, he is going to be trying to make an argument that is much like Lockell here.
He just argues from I'm right because I say I'm right. It's an arrogant position, unfortunately, that you're going to end up hearing. So I want you guys to give a listen. We'll play this. So let me move myself out.
And here we go.
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.
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.
So my affirmative for secular humanism, I guess, is basically just 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 that we can make the best decisions possible to make it.
And you can go ahead and go for your.
OK, so let me just mention it with this as we up. There's John back at John and John was sideways for a bit. So John looks like he's driving in his car. Drive safely, John. Hands on the wheel. Eyes on the road.
Don't don't get in an accident. Can't hear you're muted, though. Let's see if I can unmute you. No, I can't unmute you, so you're going to have to.
No, I just I mean, I didn't want to cause a lot of background noise while you're.
Talking. Yeah. So any so there was his opening. It literally was two minutes. I was giving him a lot of grace saying three or four. It literally was two minutes long. So, you know, we can even put maybe it's too quick.
I'm going to play his opening again in case people missed it. Actually, it was less. It was, I think, a minute. Let's see. Back up. OK, so we'll start exactly at 12. Let's play that opening that again.
Secular humanism is a period of Christianity. So you go first with your opening statement.
So my my affirmative for secular humanism, I guess, is basically just 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.
And so not even a full minute. He started at about he's like 40 second opening. That was it. I don't know what to do with that, John. So this is why I thought it almost seemed like a like a setup, like he didn't want to me.
What I was thinking at this moment was he didn't want to have anything for me to cross examine him on because he didn't say anything yet. Really, he made a claim that he never supported. So Andrew's saying it was 45 seconds.
So, yeah, 40 to 45 second opening. Wow.
So, John, I'm in a bad spot, so probably not.
Yeah. All right. So let me. All right. I'm going to make this so he's the full size. Here's the thing. I want to play mine and I want to, you know, my opening. And there is an article that anyone who that I'm going to reference and I can get the link for you.
But I'm going to reference an article that becomes very important in this discussion. The reason being, what you end up seeing is the argument that they end up having to argue for. They have to argue from a position of making a case for these these discussions.
They're they're going to argue from. We have a will. We have this free will. And what you end up seeing is that you I guess I should put myself back in while I talk. What you end up seeing is that they cannot, from their worldview, have a will.
And I reference one of their own that gives you case studies. This is the beautiful part, gives case studies that show that every time they check to see where people believe in secular humanism. And they believe that in it properly, in other words, they believe there's no will.
We are just products of chemical reactions. I had asked him if he believes that we're just products of chemical reactions. He said, yes. So that's how I responded, because that was some questions I asked an email beforehand.
And the reason why is because once he said, yes, well, I'm going to give him case studies that show. That every time you take people that don't believe in a free will, they end up being worse. And I'll quote that.
So let's look at my opening. So you're going to notice that I'm going to not just do as he did make some claims going. I'm superior. I'm actually going to give support for the claims made. So let's play that.
All right. All right. That is quick.
Two minutes, two minutes. Objective standard. You cannot appeal to an objective.
OK, hey, John, let me just ask you real quick. Can you hear can you hear it? Because I just. Justin is saying he couldn't hear us.
Are you. I can hear you now. I was in a bad spot.
So I don't know the debate. That'd be really bad if people aren't hearing that. I think I think from the response that people were saying that they were hearing it, but I heard the debate.
Yeah, I heard. Then I heard the other guy first. But then I hit a really bad spot in my neighborhood.
So I didn't hear yours. No, it was just it was just him. So let's go back to playing the debate with saying everything's just chemicals. So you first need to have a standard to go by. Now, we talk about the many things I anticipate that he will bring up is he's probably going to bring up many things that are he's going to see in the Bible that are objectionable that he's going to have.
Now, the issue there is by what standard is he appealing? He's going to have to have the argument that he can prove his worldview even exists without relying on. Well, God, he's going to have to be able to prove that things like knowledge, laws, logic, truth, morality, concepts, you're hearing my voice.
It is nothing but a vibration of air. But you understand the meanings of those words. If I start and suddenly start speaking Cantonese, I don't think many of you would understand that you understand those concepts.
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.
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. 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 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. So here's a lengthy quote. In 2002, two psychologists had a simple but brilliant idea.
Instead of speculating about what might be if people lost belief in their capacity to choose, they could run an experiment to find out. So Kayleen Voss, then at the University of Utah and Jonathan Schooler of the 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.
Then they subjected the members of each group to a variety of temptations and based their behavior, based on their behavior, would the differences of abstract physical, philosophical beliefs influence people's decisions?
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. When given the opportunity to steal, to take more money than they were due from an envelope of $1 coins, those that believed in free will had more, had been more, sorry, had been more determined to pilfer.
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. 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.
Consequently, their actions, they act less responsible and give in to their baser instincts. Voss emphasized that this result is not limited to the conceived conditions of their lab experiment. Quote, you see the same effects with people who naturally believe more or less in free will, 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.
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.
In fact, belief in free will turned out to be a better projection of job performance than the established measurement, such as self-perface work ethic. Further, studies by Blomster and colleagues have linked the diminished belief in free will to stress, sense of life's meaning.
Earlier this year, the researchers published a study showing that a weaker belief in free will correlates with poor academic performance. 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.
In every regard, it seems that when we embrace determinism, we indulge in the dark side. 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.
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. That would be my closing. All right, so what you have there is my part there was, let's see, that's minute 20.
So I was maybe a little bit over my 10 minutes, maybe. I actually did ask if we could have longer openings. And so since I think he went short, I was given a little bit more time, maybe. So someone's asking me for the links to those, I will get those.
Well, I want to play his rebuttal first. And now I want to remind you guys, this was supposed to be a 10 minute cross examination. And it wasn't exactly that, but I want to play it in its entirety. And then I'll get you the links to some of those things, because I got to dig them up real quick.
So let's continue playing. Oh, John, go ahead.
I was gonna say, he doesn't even know what a cross examination was.
No. Okay, sorry about that. I think I just dropped out accidentally. So there we go. Let me add Andrew in. Hold on. I'm not hearing anybody. I'm here. Hello. Hello. Okay. Of course, our friend locale says pretty good chance those studies were skewed.
That's called confirmation bias. Again, you know, that's the whole thing. That's what you end up seeing with with guys that that are atheists or profess to be. They just don't want to accept that, you know, any evidence that doesn't support their conclusion.
So let me give you the I got to look for where my debate notes were. I should have brought those up from earlier. Let me do this. Let me let me. Oh, I know where they were. They were in Google. That's why.
So let me play the rest of this. Should I just move forward with it? Me?
Yeah. Just to say that I missed the first minutes of what's on YouTube because you went dead. Okay. But you went back to sound. So then I found my way into here and I wrestled to get in. So it wasn't easy, but I got my way in.
Okay, well, I will have to maybe what I can do for the podcast version. I'll just drop this drop it in in there. So I'll do that. So let's go back to this. I'll get those links while we play his rebuttal.
So here we go.
All right. Thank you.
Some folks are saying they can't hear this on Facebook. YouTube seems to be able to hear this folks just to let you guys know. We'll be on podcast as well. Just don't know why that is on Facebook. You guys should be able to hear it.
Settings look. All right. So folks, if you're listening on if you can hear me and you're listening on Facebook, you might want to switch over to the YouTube. If that's let me know in chat. If you can't, I'm going to go back folks on YouTube.
Can you let me know that you can hear it hearing me now is not we want to make sure you guys can hear the debate part. So if you are on Facebook, I do know that Let me go and look on Facebook. You have to actually hit the there's a mute button.
So that may be what's what's happening. So I'm going to hit play again. We'll see if you guys can hear it. If you can't hear on Facebook over to YouTube. I don't know why there'd be the difference but.
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. But I mean, you get over it after 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. 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, if I don't free will 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. 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.
Do you want, do you want a rebuttals portion because it seemed like you're doing a rebuttal instead of a cross examination. 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 of 20 minutes on the cross examination portion and just give you 10 minutes or rebuttal time. Would that sound better.
Um, yeah, if you want to do that. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So what, what you ended up hearing with that was the, um, you know, he's, he was just explained once, uh, that, you know, he should not be, he should be doing cross examination.
Okay. So then Marlon, I think was, was being generous with that and just said, okay, I'll let Andrew do a rebuttal. And then we go back to cross examination. That's going to be important in later because later he's going to go right back to rebuttal.
Um, so, so, uh, Andrew, Andrew, who's here, any, any comments you had on, on his rebuttal.
I got the tail end of it, so I have nothing. Yeah. I mean, trying to take on Lockheed in the, in the comments here.
Oh yeah. I wouldn't even bother luck. He'll is, I mean, he's, he's just like he wants, he says that the reason, so folks know what's going on in the private check, he's saying the reason I didn't read the full article, um, which is about, I think, I think when I printed it, it was like, uh, seventh, 10 pages long.
Uh, the reason he says I didn't read the whole thing is because, you know, there was all the evidence that I didn't read that supports his false narrative. Um, no, the reason I didn't read it is because I had 10 minutes and we agreed that I could go up to 15 minutes.
Like there's a thing in, in debates where you have a time clock and you finish within time. And so I was trying to fit within time. I read the articles, but for anyone who wants, I did put the link out, uh, for the article and you could just go search the article.
Just put in quotes. It was the first one that came up quote. There's no such thing as free will unquote, put it in Google. First one that comes up, it was written by, um, uh, let's see, let me get the name of the gentleman by Stephen cave.
So just go get the article comes up from the Atlantic. You can read it yourself. Okay. I read his conclusion. I wouldn't, I mean, like he'll look, he'll whatever. We don't know what his real name is. Um, he's not dealing in reality.
Um, he's just, you know, he, he's claims I'm a liar, but he can't actually prove it. He claims, you know, because he starts with that conclusion.
He's just working off of his conclusions. Um, so let's, I was just trying to say that, uh, there's, there were actually, uh, in the Greco Roman evidences, and I've read this in John Dixon's book, uh, specters guide to Jesus.
There are actually 14 references in the non Greco Roman books of Jesus.
So I was just going to add that. I forgot. There's a site that I, uh, I don't think it's on carm. I think it, uh, I think it's actually from cold case Christianity that he lists, I think, 14 different extra biblical writings that refer to Christ written at that, at those, uh, within that timeframe.
So he, I mean, but all he's going to do is look to discredit one after another.
Of course, but I was going to throw that one in the ring just in case.
Yeah. So yeah, maybe if locale wants to come in and, you know, and next week we could actually set up a, an actual topic for debate and see if how he could do, we could maybe do that. But, um, you know, that would be kind of, I don't know if it'd be entertaining or frustrating for folks.
I don't, I don't know if he can, if he would be able to stay on, on topics, but all right, let's, uh, let me see what my rebuttal is. What my rebuttal was for this.
Yeah. Cause it seems like you're rebuttaling what he's saying. So I'll give, after you're done, I'll give Andrew the, um, 10 minutes to rebut as well.
Yeah. Okay. And then I'm done. That's all I have. That's all you have? Okay. Okay. I'm sorry. Yeah. Like I was, I was going to say, Marlon, they interrupted them. Okay. So you want me to do it? Yeah, you got it.
So let me put, let me just put my clock back on for 10 minute rebuttal. Okay. All right. So what we, you've seen so far in this is Stephen has yet to actually address the main issue of this debate. Is secular humanism superior to Christianity?
He has yet to even attempt to do this. Now, can I prove the laws of logic are not products of the human brain, not something that was discovered by people? Yes, I can very easily. Uh, you could take the second law of logic, which is a law of non-contradiction.
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, before there was even a universe. Could the universe have existed and not existed at the same time and the same way?
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, contradictions exist. Or you have to say that no, the laws of logic apply and therefore are not the product of a human brain.
Can we measure a rock objectively rolling? No, you cannot do that believing in subjectivity. When you believe that it's just chemical reactions, the only way to measure the rock rolling is to have the same standard.
If he's using the metric system and I'm using a system of, you know, in America, guess what? We have a problem, right? So you're not going to get the same measurement because you're using a different standard.
So if someone makes up a standard back years ago, they used to call a foot, you know, the length of the king's foot or, you know, cubit was the length of the forearm. That's not an accurate way to measure.
So they needed an objective way to get consistent things. So it does have to be objective. He says concepts are something that... Okay. I just want to stop it at this moment to show, did you guys see what, look at, let me back it up.
Look at his face in this. This is why we were saying it doesn't look like he even wants to be here. Look at his face when we play this, you know, the length of the king's foot or, you know, cubit was the length of the forearm.
That's not an accurate way to measure. So they needed an objective way to get consistent things. So it does have to be objective. I mean, just look at that. He's got his hand completely over his face.
Like, Oh, what am I doing here? I don't know how to answer these things. Like he did not seem like he even wanted to be in this debate. I don't know. Here we go. 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. I understand them. That is something that is, we're both understanding the concepts. So that is then that's an immaterial thing.
However, when he talks about the, you know, he can imagine a world where these things could exist. That's true. 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 believe in.
They live in a fairy tale. They believe in a magical bang that exploded from nothing. But then nothing was actually something exploded into everything. It defies all the laws that we actually have. And that's why they have to say that nothing was actually something.
There'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, is that he has not shown yet that secular humanism in any way whatsoever is superior to Christianity.
Okay. My rebuttal. I guess now is the cross examination forces. So we can go.
Okay. Now notice he has to say, okay, this is now. He says, now my rebuttal, my rebuttal. No, it's your cross examination time. It was your, it's your time for your cross. He's like, is it my rebuttal?
No, it's your cross because he still doesn't get it. Here we go.
Ask each other questions. Real cool. So yeah, Steve, you got it. Go ahead.
See, Marlon did it well. He's trying to be respectful. Let me just run down these responses.
So he goes back to rebuttal. I don't think I would mention before a universe. I can't fathom what anything would have been like before the universe.
I would challenge you to be able to do the same. I, 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. I don't even know if humans, given all perfect information set up, the universe could know what the universe was like before the universe.
But of course, I mean, I would, I would pose the same challenge to you. What does the world look like before God or any question like that? We can retreat back to the ground that will maybe God is eternal.
Like I said, well, maybe the universe is eternal. We're kind of in the same boat again. 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?
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. 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. So it seemed by virtue of that own example that, well, yeah, we can obviously grab common measurement systems.
We do it all the time. Concepts. So apparently we're having I'm not I'm not 100 sure what immaterial means. And when we're talking about like we're saying words of understanding concepts, therefore things are immaterial.
So my physicalist or materialist definition is that every phenomenon that arises can be traced to like physical causes. 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.
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.
Nothing about the process of us communicating requires any sort of immaterial world or immaterial knowledge or anything of the sort. 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. 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 fairy tale to say that God created everything as it is to say there is a big bang that created everything in the beginning of the universe. I mean, I don't think one of these things is is like super logical, like God made everything.
And the other one is super fantastical, like there's a big bang. And then like the final assertion, well, you have to keep adjusting things. I mean, that's how I would expect any good like investigatory tool to work.
You would want to keep adjusting your theories based on newly collected information. 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.
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 text said came to not be true or can't be validated in any way with the tools we have today.
OK, so let us and by the way, folks, for those who are watching, I guess when I mute this, it was muting all of it. So sorry about that. I will try to get this all fixed for the podcast. And if you guys want to listen there, did you hear he makes the claim?
And this is the thing. Notice the argument. And Marlon brought this up in the beginning is he just claims that, well, I prefer thinking it's the the the base assumption he has is that Christians do things based solely on not thinking just faith, but faith.
Actually, he doesn't understand is something you trust. It's a belief system. In other words, it requires thinking. No one believes something for no reason whatsoever. Everybody, even even Lockell, who was in here earlier.
He's got a faulty thinking, but it's not that he's without thinking in believing what he believes. It's just bad thinking. Same thing with Stephen here. It's just bad thinking. So this is what you end up seeing.
It's a argument that is a fallacy. It's missing the point because he's not actually addressing the issue. You're going to hear me in the cross examination now because I'm just going to start with a cross examination.
You're going to hear me several times having to ask him to support the argument that secular humanism is superior to Christianity because he assumes it. That's what arrogance looks like, because he assumes it and says it's true for everybody.
That's arrogance. He doesn't support it. He gives his support for it is actually is actually a form of avoiding the actual issue. He's never going to answer the question throughout the whole debate. So here's going to be my cross examination with him.
OK. So.
My turn for. Yeah, go ahead, Andrew. You got 10 minutes for cross examination.
OK. So the way we cross examination works is you ask me a question. I ask you to answer it. You ask. I ask you questions. You answer it. So. Do you. Based on what you had said, do Christians use facts and observation?
Yeah, I would imagine everybody purports to. Yeah.
OK. So therefore, it's not based on story and from an old book, like you said.
Well, no, those would be the facts and observations. Right.
OK, 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. 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 fair. So how specifically is secular humanism superior to Christianity?
So if you ask the 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.
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. 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.
So that's sort of a priority 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.
But you just spend a good amount of time explaining that we don't know the beginning of the universe. We don't know how that is. 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.
So you're saying, 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.
You've admitted that your worldview, secular humanism, has unverifiable facts. Okay. So now we're on the same boat. How is it superior?
Yeah. So this I totally reject this. So you're saying that my problem is I say, well, Christianity is unverifiable claims. And then you turn it around to say, well, you can't tell me how the universe started.
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.
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.
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.
My problem with Christians isn't that they have some unverifiable claims. It's that they use these unverifiable claims to make judgments about the world on a daily basis. 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 God is actively saying.
I'm going to stop this here for this reason. I'm going to back this up so you can hear what he just said. He just said that scientists don't argue, well, the big bang happened. Therefore, we don't say, oh, well, just because the big bang happened.
But he's going to later argue that we only do science by believing in evolution. Later, he ends up, he didn't even realize he contradicted himself because he's later going to argue, when I argue that Christians, there were just as many Christians that put a person on the moon as non-Christians.
There's nothing about being a non-Christian, a secular humanist that put a man on the moon. There were believers there too that were also involved. The MRI was invented by a believer. Believers do science.
That's going to be the argument. He's going to reject what he just said. I want to play this again so you re-hear it so later you can hear the contradiction.
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. 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.
My problem with Christians isn't that they have some unverifiable claims. It's that they use these unverifiable claims to make judgments about the world on a daily basis. 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 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.
I don't know if at any point Stephen is going to actually answer questions that are asked or just do rabbit trails, so we'll try this again. See, the question, Stephen, is not what happens with it because the appeals to science are the same appeals Christians make.
The issue is the secular humanism that you're arguing for is just chemical reactions. 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.
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.
That doesn't sound superior to me or to any objective standards. So you said better was the standard of superior. I'm trying to find out how secular humanism, in what measurable way we can say secular humanism is superior to Christianity.
I'm still waiting. So I'll ask it again. How is secular humanism superior to Christianity?
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.
Okay, he doesn't rely on unmeasurable statements to measure the world. Yet earlier, I asked him some things. He goes, well, you know, just because I can't measure it doesn't mean... Wait, he's relying on unmeasurable statements to measure the world.
Oops. And I'm going to call him out on that, I think. So, yeah, it's interesting to see this is what ends up happening. Because he has an inconsistent worldview, contradictions probably are okay in his mind.
But let's see how he tries to answer this.
I'm not going to tell somebody that a certain level of prayer is going to cure somebody over a medical product of some kind. 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.
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, I would say. Whether or not we can show that certain studies today show there are 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.
That just says that people's ideas right now of free will are very much tied into how they do themselves. I mean we can very easily change that. 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.
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. You can't really do that same thing with religion.
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. You have three different religious people telling us what's different.
There is no way at the end of the day to settle any of these disputes, 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.
Okay. So you have a great straw man argument because you've yet to explain what Christianity properly is. You continue to go through an argument that's not real. I mean this is a red herring. 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. No, it can't. The first law of thermodynamics proves that. So the dilemma you have is where did the universe come from?
There's only three possibilities. Was it eternal, violating the first law of thermodynamics? Did it create itself, violating the second law of logic because it would first have to exist to be able to create itself?
Therefore, someone or something must have created it. Those are the only three options. Which of those three would you hold to?
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. 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.
I can't fathom that. I mean I wouldn't appeal to any of those three things that the universe violates. Non-contradiction. I can't have information about what happened before the existence of the universe.
So you can't verify that? 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. I'm not sure.
Well, I verified it within the question. Okay. You can verify these things. Things like the first, second, third law and thermodynamics prove some of these things out. So we do have some verification with these things.
We can tell that matter did have a beginning. So Einstein showed that. So there are ways to verify it. You, however, seem to have a worldview that isn't verifiable. And then you criticize Christianity saying it is the one that's not verifiable.
So I'm still trying to figure out where we Let me ask these questions and two minutes I have left. By what authority can you argue that one chemical reaction is superior to another chemical reaction?
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. So the appeal that I would broadly make is that humans seem to prefer some states to other states.
And it seems like it's easiest if all of us kind of get together and push towards states that most of us agree are preferable to the non-preferable ones. 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, and it seems like we don't violate other people's right to life or existence or whatever when we move towards that second world.
So that seems to be what we all kind of agree to move towards. I don't believe there is an objective standard by which we can measure good or bad. I don't believe there's an objective way to say this is morally virtuous versus this is a moral wrong.
So I wouldn't go as far as to say that there's an authority that I can appeal to with some sort of moral statement. I would just descriptively state that, well, people tend to move towards areas that make them feel better than other areas.
Okay. Well, there's only 19 seconds left, so I'll save the questions.
All right. Thank you, Andrew. Now, Steve, it's your turn for a 10-minute examination.
Yeah, I got you. Wait, did my camera just turn? Oh, there you go. Sorry. There you go. So I guess if you're religious, you must see God in the world today doing something, I imagine, unless you believe in the clock starter or whatever, where he started the universe and just kind of stepped away.
Where do you see God in the world today?
Everywhere. He holds it all together.
So if I were to ask you to point to a thing where I was like, what part of this what fact of the world shows this is 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. We know how the process works inside the woman. We know how the baby's delivered. I can show this whole process using scientific inventions. Where is God at? I guess I'm trying to find him in any of these areas.
Where do I look?
Well, okay. 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, these things that are immaterial that you want to avoid answering.
So the fact is, where is God? Well, he's in that whole process. Because if you actually understood the birth process, you'd realize that it goes against the way that the egg is going to go down the tube to get to where it can be fertilized by a sperm.
There's little hairs that go opposite direction, and yet the egg still travels that way. How does that happen? That shouldn't happen, but it does happen. So it couldn't happen evolutionarily, but it does.
It happens. So what we end up seeing is there's a lot of things that just couldn't be without God. So where's God in it? Well, the whole concept, the whole idea that we can sit there and realize that these two chemicals suddenly get an immaterial part of them.
That immaterial part of you that is you, that part that can reason, that ability to reason, that ability to understand concepts. This is part of an immaterial part of you that is at conception. So if specifically you want to know with birth, I don't know what that has to do with secular humanism being superior to Christianity.
Okay, so what I ended up doing there was taking the argument that he gave, he wanted birth. And now what you're going to see him is just, he's going to do kind of like Lukie was doing earlier, just rejecting any information that doesn't agree with his conclusion.
I could tell you where I got my information from. A biologist was someone who has a PhD in biology and gynecology. That's where I got that information from, that there's, I forget what he called the hairs.
I call them hairs because I don't know the technical, I couldn't remember the technical term. But, you know, he was explained there's these hairs that go one way and that the egg goes against the flow there.
He had explained all these different things that go in just the egg getting down there. Now, what does he do? You're going to hear him. He just goes, well, that's not true. Okay. You know, I can give you the source for where I get information from, but just saying, well, that's not true.
That's not support. So that's the kind of argumentation you end up hearing from folks like this. They don't actually support the claim.
It seems like we've basically ceded the entire ground that God doesn't exist in any observable way in the universe. 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.
We totally could say that. How do you need God for logic?
What is the process like for that argument? 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.
I won't let you do that. Okay. You asked for an objective, a specific way in a specific case of birth. And I gave you a specific way scientifically that it can't work evolutionarily.
Okay. The childbirth thing, I'm familiar with that. That's just not true. So I don't know how to respond to that.
I can't show you as a woman. Okay. So do you hear what he just said? He admits I'm just not familiar with that. It's just not true. This is why I say he destroyed his own argument. Notice he admits that he doesn't know, doesn't have an understanding of the topic, doesn't know what's going on.
Then he says an absolute statement as if he has the knowledge. This is something that you can sometimes see in a debate. Some people will do. I know in early debates, I know I've done it where you just get kind of hamstrung and you don't know what to say.
And there can be a pride that occurs where you just want to win. He's in that state probably because it's something he never thought about. He gave an example. And notice the tactic he wanted to do. He just wanted to restate what I said, but opposite to the way I actually said it.
Restate it to the way he wanted it to be said, and then we'll move on. And then what he could do is just leave that out there. Why did I do what I did? I did what I did to not let him off the hook. I mentioned what he did.
I exposed what he did, corrected what he said, and then said, let's continue then. Once he had to continue, why did he do that? Because as he just said, well, I don't know anything about that. It's just not true.
He said it because he doesn't know anything about that. That's why. He was stuck. He didn't have an answer. And so his way of doing it is just to, the first tactic, restate something the way he wanted it to be said, and then say, let's move on.
When he couldn't do that, he's just going to state, no, you're just wrong. But the mistake was he first mentioned he doesn't know anything about this. So if he doesn't know anything about the subject, how could he know it's wrong?
I'll go and watch a video or we can read in a book how childbirth. There is no hairs that prevented the fertilized egg or fetus from moving through a woman for childbirth. I don't know how to respond to that.
He says he doesn't know anything about it. Right. But it isn't there. It isn't there. How do you know it's not there if you haven't studied it? Right. Simple, simple thinking. So you're just ignorant on the subject.
That's fine. But don't then conclude that I haven't said that. 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 God in the universe. 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.
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. All you have is a bunch of claims.
Yeah. So my initial claim is really insane. I'm sorry. Were you finished? No, go ahead. Okay. If I talk when you're talking, it'll cut you out. So I'm trying to talk over here 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. 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.
So it seems like you just moved to the point that you said I was trying to get you on, which is where even if I were to concede that childbirth is somehow not possible without God, which 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.
So notice what he's doing here. He asks for a scenario. So in the scenario that he provided, I gave him an answer. In the scenario he provided. Now, he'll go on to again later on claim that there was no evidence given.
This is what you have. He's either not listening or just rejecting everything that doesn't support his conclusion. I want you guys to see because this is what these guys do. They think they're being really smart with it, but it is arrogance to say that I'm right because I just made the claim or because a lot of people agree with me.
He's not supporting the claim. He's just making a claim. Okay. And so I want you to notice that I want you to notice the tactics because these tactics are nothing new. I saw in the comments earlier that Rob had said, I'll be honest, I wouldn't have had a good answer of an answer for this question as I did.
And the thing is, you got to start to spot the tactics they play. That's all this is. These are games that they're playing. He's going to just keep repeating his conclusion over and over again. But notice he's not supporting the claims.
And I'll keep asking him to prove secular humanism is superior to Christianity. He never throughout the entire debate even attempts to answer that. The only one that defined terms was me. And so that becomes a problem.
So I'm going to keep playing this.
This is through women in order to have childbirth against the own bodies that God also supposedly designed. I don't know. I don't follow that argument at all. But the argument I'm more interested in, I don't know if we're going to go back to the childbirth thing, 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. How can you possibly say that we require a God for laws of logic to exist?
Why does it say require God? Because immaterial things need an immaterial source. Chemical reactions, material things cannot produce immaterial. That's just a law of nature. So if you have anything that's immaterial, as I've kept saying, I mean, you keep saying that I'm not providing that example.
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. We use the same exact science. There's very little science that's based in whether God exists or not exists.
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 I've developed. No, it's not. It's fictitious. So, you know, because every time you have an immaterial entity, it requires an immaterial source.
That's why it's 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. But you have plenty of things you can't verify, as you've said.
And yet you keep saying that it's us Christians that can't verify anything. That's not being accurate to what Christianity holds to. And the one thing that hasn't been done throughout this is any kind of even definition, you know, other than I gave in the beginning of which was your definitions to what secular humanism is and Christianity is.
You've yet to describe Christianity itself. You've made claims of Christians. That's not Christianity. You've yet to make a support.
I mean, we can go over the definitions of secular humanism and go to Christianity. And 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.
But in terms of I guess it like the frustrating thing is that when you go to church. So I went to church every 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 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 like 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. Because I can ask you again, because you actually haven't answered this.
How do we get laws of logic from God? And how can you even know that you're getting those laws of logic from God?
Okay, so notice a couple things. One, he announced he was Catholic. There's a problem. But notice what he does. He says, I didn't answer. Actually, I did answer that earlier. But watch how I'm going to answer again.
He still doesn't accept the answer. Why? Because it goes back to confirmation bias. What you end up seeing them do is just, oh, wait, I don't like that support. Nope, just throw it away. That's what he's going to end up doing.
I already said that it's an immaterial entity and it needs an immaterial source. That's why it requires God. I said that just a few minutes ago. But watch.
He's still not going to get it. Just even begin to pull the thought. How can you know what he is if he's required to even think? How do you even get that information?
Sure. The laws of logic come from the nature of God. That's where they come from. 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.
He has written this. We have the fact that he's put laws in our heart. We have a conscience. We know right from wrong. That's the evidence. You can look at nature. God's created the stars and everything else.
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. So we can have something objective that we can look to.
Now, if we're just chemical reactions, then there is no objective reality. So he's given us something objective. You said no religions can compare themselves, can come to one true one. In my close, I will give you how to prove objectively what is the one true religion.
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. 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 is, let me stop here to show you a tactic that he's doing. So you guys could recognize this. Well, the reason we're going through this, I want you to be able to see the tactics that people do.
I want you to see what games they play so that you can recognize it. So when you debate, you're able to spot this stuff. Okay. What did he do? He's trying to turn it on me. Now, remember who is on the side that has to support the argument.
The debate is, is secular humanism superior to Christianity? Who has to support it? He does. That's the thing. I don't have to defend the topic. Right. So what is he doing? He's trying to turn the tables.
Why is he doing that? Because I've already shown he's not answering the question. I've shown he's not supporting his claims. That's why he's doing this. That's why you're seeing him do this. Because he can't.
And this is what you see over and over again. Watch any debate with Michael Del Hunty. Michael Del Hunty. Sorry, Matt Del Hunty. Matt Del Hunty debated Matt Slick on the same very topic. The reason that Matt, when we were working together on this, trying to come up with a debate topic, I had said, Matt, you've got to pick a topic where he has got to defend his claim.
Because all he does, he's always on the offensive, just throwing pot shots. That's what you see these guys do. They don't want to be on the defensive. What happened in the debate with Matt Del Hunty and Matt Slick?
When it came to cross-examination, he's like, hey, let's have a discussion. He even admitted this is hard. That's right. It's hard to defend an argument. So what does he do? He says, let's just have a discussion and let's ignore the cross-examination.
What do you see Stephen doing? Ignore the cross-examination, just do a rebuttal. Now what's he doing in the cross-examination? Trying to turn it to say, no, you have to support it. Well, I do have to support the claims that I make.
But see, the fact that even if my claims were wrong doesn't prove that his conclusion, secular humanism, spirit of Christianity, is right. That's the thing that in the debate he's got to prove. He's got to prove secular humanism is superior to Christianity.
He doesn't do that. So this is why I want you guys to see the tactics. I want you to be able to identify these things so that you're able to know when you see it, when you're debating people, so you can recognize the tactic.
The creator who created the universe created it with laws of logic in place. 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.
You say you believe in things that are facts and objective and they can be researched. Show me how chaos creates organization because that's essential to your view. Now you'll probably appeal and say, well, it's not
I can't verify that. 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. So, again, I'm just not seeing how that's making Christianity inferior in any way to secular humanism.
All right, that's 10 minutes. We're now going to close the statements. Steve, you have the first closing statement. Okay, so he's going to go closing statements. I'm going to play the closing statements.
I'm going to time it because I want to see how quick his closing statement was here. It was a pretty quick one, so let's do that, just like his opening.
Yeah, so I mean my close, I mean like this is kind of like rock bottom for the presuppositional argument. Typically, you ask them, okay, 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, 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.
So, for instance, like how can I know that law of identity is real or causality is real or non-contradictory is real? 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. 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.
And those are the yeah, that's my closing on that. All right. All right. So there you go. It was about three minutes.
All right. Let's see what my closing is. And now the reason I'm going to play this closing is not so much because I think that the closing was I mean I do try to answer the argument, but this is what as a Christian I want to see in every Christian debate with an unbeliever that the gospel is explained.
Debating is useless if you're going to argue if you're going to sit there and say, well, we're just going to debate so we can win. This isn't about winning. And I want you to understand that. This is about getting the mouth shut so the gospel can go forth.
That's the importance of this. So why do all this is for the gospel. So let's listen to that part.
Now you have 10 minutes left for closing statements.
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. 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.
I think I did. When I stated he's the creator, if he created a world, a universe with the laws of logic, then it comes from him. 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.
By the way, he keeps appealing to ancient texts. Well, the fact is is that none of the science Christians do science, so that doesn't prove that secular humanism is superior. 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 absolutely. I bet Stephen is not because he's not old enough to remember when there was time that people thought about ether.
Ether was this thought that there was something, invisible force between all objects, and yet, nope, there was no ether. Einstein proved that. So we change in science, and that's fine, 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. We just had a case recently where a professor found soft tissue in a T-Rex sorry, in a horn of a Triceratops.
And what we find, he got fired for saying, well, this can't happen unless the Earth is young. So whenever we have someone that is believing in anything other than what is allowed to be taught in science, in other words, they will shut down anything that disagrees with their conclusion.
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, and to say that anyone that's religious doesn't follow science.
No, we do follow science. 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-Christians. And none of that affected any of their religious system.
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 strong arguments of Christianity, based on conclusions that he didn't affirm or couldn't verify.
The fact is, is he said that he does everything based on facts and objectives. 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.
He's made that clear. Now, he asked, how can you know which religion is true? 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.
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 man-made versus divine. Very simply, one of the things we know about human nature is they will always praise, humans will always praise their own works.
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. 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 man-made religion.
So when you look at that simple objective way, you can compare every single religion. What do you see? Every single religion except for one, biblical Christianity, says man does something. If it's Catholicism as Stephen grew up, that would be a man-made religion because they believe in works plus faith.
If you want to believe in Islam, you do one good work counts for 10 bad works. If you want to do Second Temple Judaism, which is not biblical Judaism of the Old Testament, they would say you get right with God by doing Torah, by obeying the law.
So every system has this idea of works. 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, 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, Stephen, myself, Marlo, and all of you watching included, all of us break God's law. We have a conscience, 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 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.
God himself became a man, came to earth, and he paid the full punishment of sin upon himself on that cross. When he was on that cross, he took the full weight of sin, the punishment that I deserve, and he paid it himself, being an eternal being.
This is why it's important that he's God. This is another unique thing of Christianity. Not only is it the only one where God does everything, but it's 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. Christianity is not. Christianity is not based on teachings. It's based on a person, and that person being 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. 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.
So here's two of three objective ways you can compare which religion is true. I'll get to the third in a moment. 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.
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 thinks they can do it their own way. A third objective way is that every religion will say that God is both just and merciful.
Islam will refer to Allah most merciful, but you cannot have justice and mercy in the same way in the same time. 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, 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. If I tap him lightly, that's not grace, that's not mercy, and it's not just. So you get neither. 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.
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. 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.
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 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?
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.
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 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.
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, 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.
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. That's what we have in the Bible.
God created the universe. He observed it. He recorded it. 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 of the universe is found in Genesis chapter 1.
All right. So that was the debate. I hope that you guys enjoyed that. I hope that going through some of the post-debate that you get to see, you get to see basically some of the tactics that get used.
You get to see some of the arguments I made, why some of those arguments, why I made some of the claims that I did. So the purpose of doing this isn't just to play a debate because I would have just played it that way and not interrupt throughout.
But the goal of this is to help you guys in your apologetics, to help you spot these things. These tricks are not unique to Steve. I mean, it's the irony because we had the we'll call him the liar locale because he doesn't want to give his real name.
So as long as he's going to lie about his name, we'll just call him the lying locale or locale the liar, whichever way you want to do it. You got to give him a nickname. So that seems to be one that fits because, well, yeah.
But he was a great example. He did the same thing Steve did. It was almost like he wanted to show, hey, look, all of us that reject truth, we do the same things because that's what they have no choice.
They have no choice. Once you reject truth, I mentioned earlier Jim Wallace, J. Warner Wallace, is how he goes by as an author. And he talks about the example when you have someone if he walks into a crime scene, they look and someone's murdered and someone goes, okay, well, we walk in, we got to find out who did it, but an African-American didn't do it.
Well, what's going to happen? If an African-American did do it, you're never going to find him. Why? Because you're not looking for that. You're looking for anything else. Once you if you say a man didn't do it and it was a man, well, what happens?
You're immediately going to reject any evidence because the conclusion forces it. Well, that's what happens. You know, Mike Riddle, he used to be Speaker of the American Genesis. He's now with Creation Training Institute, I think is the name of his organization.
But go check out Mike Riddle. And he does this really funny thing. He'll say, okay, I want you guys to do me a favor and tell me what 3 plus 4 is. But I got some rules. You can't say 7. You can't spell 7.
You can't give the number 7 in some other form like binary or hex or something. No, you can't in any way refer to 7. Give me the answer what 3 plus 4 is. And he'll just sit there and feel like he can't figure it out.
So he'll yell out 11. He'll go, right, 21, right. And they start to realize, once you reject the right answer, the true answer, and you start from the get-go, you're going to go, that can't be. Then you're going to be stuck with trying to get any answer that can work.
And that's exactly what you see these guys doing. So, yeah, there you have it. That was the debate, some of the basically the different points with that. I do want to encourage you folks to check out.
If you want to ever join us every week, we're going to be doing more Q &As coming up. Find out when Matt's going to be back. And we'll probably have some guest apologists coming in. If any of you have some topics you want debated, discussed, come on in here.
I did a program on an old show years ago on Zeitgeist. We actually played through the movie, went through the source documents. Maybe I should do that again because it's kind of funny. That again, when you start with a conclusion, they all argue for December 25th, and that was a day no one believes Jesus was born.
So the arguments say, oh, look, here's December 25th. They're all born December 25th. Jesus was born December 25th, except no one believes he was born December 25th. The word son with S-U-N, as the other religions have it, and S-O-N, yeah, that only works in English.
You see, that becomes the problem. It sounds the same, but it's not the same word. Justin Pierce wants some Mormonism and Jehovah Witnesses, so we could do those topics. What I'd really like, if anyone has a Jehovah Witness or a Mormon that would like to come in and do a discussion on the topics, on the belief systems, that would be great.
Let's do that, have that. I do want to mention our trip to Israel. Folks, March 2021, go to 2021israeltrip .com. Check that site out. We are going to be going to Israel. We are filling up. I don't know.
I think we're half-filled or over. And so I do know that Eric has these giveaways he does. And for people who sign up, the earlier you sign up, the more things that he gives. He was giving $100 off. That's off the table.
But he's still giving some books and DVDs. And soon, I think, they're going to be off the table. So make sure you register now. Now, if you pay the down payment now, that saves your seat. But you have until next Thanksgiving.
That's more than a year away to cancel. And you get all but, I think, $125 back. So you have plenty of time to save your seat and make the decision later. So go to 2021israeltrip .com. Also, to let you know, if you're checking out the Christian Podcast Community, we're going to be having a whole lot of changes to that site.
So I want you to check that out. We're going to be coming up with a brand new site. And so if you go to christianpodcastcommunity .org, you can see all of the podcasts that we have there. All of them are there.
And when you go there, you'll be able to see the new site. It should be up, I hope, next week, maybe the week after. So we're hoping to get that. It's going to be a lot easier. And that's been holding up about six of our podcasts.
We've got six new podcasts that want to join. The problem is we want to have a clean move over so that everything is nice and set up so we're not doing double work so early. So we're going to try to do that.
So with that, I want to thank you guys. Andrew, you have anything you want to say before we close out on the debate? Any points you want to bring up? No, no. And so I should mention this. Maybe I'll do
I don't know if I'll do this on this show or my Rap Report podcast, but I have been asked to address the issue of Flat Earth. I know. It's a joke. It was actually started the Flat Earth Society was started by an agnostic.
So just always keep that in mind. He targeted the Christian people that claim to be Christians. But, yeah, so I will probably tackle that one sometime soon. So until then, I just want to remind you guys to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.
And we will see you next week with an open Q &A for any of your talking points.