A Brief Conversation with "Open Air Atheist"

The Caller’s Background and Prior Contact with the Host

Commenters on my channel on the Open Air Atheist on YouTube, and I think I had one particular Christian in mind who wanted me to call in. And, actually, I'm familiar with you because I actually met you at the debate with Dan Barker in 2009 in Oregon.

I was there at your interview before the debate, and...

Oh, okay, okay, yes, uh-huh.

Okay, I was an open-air preacher back then. And I actually shared a lot of your same theology. I guess I pretty much mirrored Charles Spurgeon. So I understand where you're coming from, theologically.

Faith, Evidence, and the New Birth

The question was, I had a question that I intended to ask you, but then I heard you make some remarks while I was waiting on the phone concerning... you start talking about weathers, and for someone to say that, you know, God isn't behind that.

I think that was pretty much your assertion. Making a dogmatic statement would be, how can you justify... Absolutely is faith, without just saying, well, I know because...

Without appealing to faith, um, without...

And then you'd probably ask me to define my term by faith.

Yeah, obviously it seems to be something you think you should not have, or something.

Well, I have a problem with people believing something on insufficient evidence. I, as an atheist, as my particular atheistic position, is not that there emphatically is no God. My position, as Dawkins' position is, is that with the information I have thus far, it's highly unlikely that God exists.

Now, that's not to say that there isn't some information that I lack, and that that information could change my mind in the future, but as a Calvinist, I understand that you believe that, you know, you can't believe in God, first of all, until you have been born of God.

5 -1?

1 John 5 -1.

Where you illustrated how the believing ones...

That's actually 1 John 5 -1.

Is it 1 John 5 -1? Excuse me. I actually did a video on that not too long ago. So, believing is something that comes after...

You don't see the difference between believing in that way, and the fact that the Bible says you know God exists, but you're suppressing that knowledge?

Right, Romans 1.

You don't see a difference between those two?

I do. I do see the difference there, but I'm just trying to articulate that I do understand where you're coming from, and I just didn't get to that part. Problem is, is that I know, and I mean, I can't convince you of this, because you're already convinced of something else.

I know that I don't believe, and it's not that I'm looking at evidence and I'm just denying it. Oh no, I don't want God to... But I look at all of the facts of evolution that I want strong. Now that I understand it, I see that it makes sense, I see the evidence, I see the massive amounts of...

I see that the lives studying that field do not reject evolution, and there's really no debate inside of the civic community on evolution, and that's why a lot of people like Dawkins do not like to debate creationists, because it creates some sort of idea that there is a debate.

Evolution, Scientific Consensus, and Bias

Yeah, James, the reason they don't do it is because they're suppressing the other side. That's just so painfully obvious. I just have to wonder, if you try to take the position of atheism that you now are attempting to promulgate, the question I would have is if you...

Is there something going on behind you or something?

Oh, yeah.

It sounds like you're about to be attacked by a massive vacuum cleaner.

No, I think there's some construction going on across the street.

Oh, okay. It just seems rather odd that you now take a majority view of a particular community, which is expressed very, very carefully and under a tremendous amount of control, as if that is sufficient evidence for you to just simply declare the debate is over.

It sounds like you're very, very certain of something. What caused that certainty to all of a sudden happen? You admit that you were strawmanning things in the past.

Oh, sure.

Just like Ray Comfort says, a crocoduck. And that's not at all what evolution teaches at all.

Have you ever heard me do that?

No, no, no.

Okay, then you've probably watched my debate with Dan Barker, then.

Absolutely.

Not the first one, the first one in Illinois.

No, I didn't. I didn't watch that, actually.

Oh, because there is a real cool video in there about F1 ATPase and its function in the mitochondria of the cell. And so I was, since there's no debate and you are so certain, I was going to ask you to maybe explain exactly how, given that this is part of the very mechanics of the cell, it's not a part of exterior traits, the things that would be influenced by, for example, population pressures and predation pressures and things like that, how you would explain the existence of mechanical devices, because it does use mechanical energy.

Dr. Wright, hold on a second. I understand where you're going with this, okay?

Well, how can I be sure you understand it? Because you said you were strawmanning it before, and when you gave me the strawman, that would indicate to me that you didn't understand.

No, no, no, no.

I don't understand it to the level that Dawkins or an evolutionary biologist would. I understand Koine Greek very well. I've studied it for a long time. Do I understand it to your level enough to debate you?

No.

So I would not even attempt to. As far as when you go off rambling about something that I'm not an expert on...

I'm not rambling about AHAM. I'm explaining something that you could then go and look on YouTube and you could watch the debate, and I was simply explaining to folks that...

The debate that you had between Dan Barker, who's not a scientist?

Uh, yeah.

How is that relevant?

It's extremely relevant because it's a piece of factual information that you've already dismissed as saying there is no debate, can be no debate, and yet you cannot explain it from within your worldview.

That's not what I said. What I said was, is that in the science that the mass majority of scientists do not consider it even debate, and to debate on the subject. I'm not saying that there isn't some evidence that I...

Excuse me, how is that relevant? Excuse me, how is that relevant? Are you seriously telling me, James, that the quote-unquote scientific community today, that each one of those individuals thoroughly examines all the issues of this subject?

Wouldn't you have to admit that the vast majority of them, including, and especially including, Richard Dawkins, are philosophically, for example, absolutely, abysmally ignorant?

I have not made any absolute statements in this conversation thus far. There are possibilities, yes. There are possibilities that Dawkins is wrong, he's biased, he's just... And I agree with that, we're all biased to some degree.

That is, uh, erected to... In my debate with...

Really?

Matt Slick...

Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute. The edifice of science is erected to correct bias. Is that why, for example, for the past decade and a half, we've had people like Al Gore running around making billions of dollars, all basically on the basis of politics and not meaningful science?

Because science was erected to keep that from happening?

Well, I mean, we could debate whether or not... I don't know much about the global warming thing, and, okay...

The point is, James, is that the community that you have now made evidently your ultimate authority, and that's at least a major reason for your conversion to some form of atheism, is not a community that's either unbiased or self-correcting, and in fact, its foundational conclusions on key issues changes rather regularly, and interestingly enough, if you were consistent, you'd have to admit, can only judge upon physical evidences, right?

The Nature of the Conversion from Christianity to Atheism

Are you going to let me finish at any point? And I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I have a lot of respect for you, and I think you're a highly intelligent person, great guy, from what I can see, so please don't take me as...

But my position... I'm not saying that there is no God. I'm not saying... With the information that I have, not Dawkins, not everyone else, that I personally have, thus highly unlikely, that God exists.

I do not assert, unlike a lot of theists, that I know everything, or that I have read the book that does, or the being that does.

So, James, you...

And I'm not saying that you're saying that.

So, James, you're saying that you're not making an absolute statement, and yet you have abandoned, I assume, a profession of belief in God, and did you not identify yourself when you first called in as an open-air atheist?

Correct.

I was an open-air preacher, and that's the name of the show.

Correct.

So, do you... You take this to the street now or something?

No, no. It's just, I guess, a play on words, because I was, you know, doing a lot of...

But this hasn't been very long, has it?

No, it hasn't. And a lot of things, there isn't one reason why one phone call is just ridiculous. It can't happen.

But, James, something like this is... James, this is really fast. What kind of time frame are we talking about?

There isn't any one time where I just said, oh, you know what, I'm going to be an atheist today. There was a lot of things that when I did apologetics, that would stick in my mind that I could not explain, and then there got to be so many questions that, in order to hold on to my position as a theist, would be dishonest.

Can I ask you one more question?

Sure, sure.

Were you involved with the church?

Yes, I was.

You were a member of a church and there regularly?

Yes.

Okay.

I don't know if I should say this...

No, you don't have to. It's up to you.

I was a member of a Calvinist Baptist church. They weren't reformed, but they were committed to the doctrines of grace. So, yes, I was a state member.

Have they done anything about this?

About what?

About where you are now.

Well, one of the...

I mean, you don't have to tell me. I'm just asking.

No, no, no.

Answer any questions you ask. Actually, a very notorious open-air preacher went to church with me and he teaches at the Ambassadors Academy with Ray Comfort there. And, yeah, I mean, they know about this.

We've debated back and forth. If you go on YouTube and watch my show, you can watch our debates.

Well, I understand, but has the church done any... Did you go to them with your questions when you began having these issues? And, by the way, how long had you been a Christian before you were doing open-air preaching?

Process, Predestination, and the Move Away from Apologetics

Well, because I didn't believe that there was a specific time or I didn't know when the specific time was. I hear Ray Comfort or a lot of Arminians saying, oh, it's such and such a date.

I said this little prayer.

And, you know, I didn't believe that.

Okay.

I was kind of toying with the idea that I was, in one sense, always safe because I was always predestined to be safe. I was always in God's mind before the first sunset, before the foundations of the world.

So, in that sense, I was always safe. Now, when did this experience happen? I don't know. It was over a process of time. It was through time and experience, at least I felt at the time. So, I can't really trace it back.

I mean, I can...

Excellent.

To an exact point, I can tell you this, that to spend some time in jail for a misdemeanor crime, I got a book called God Doesn't Believe in Atheists. I read it. Didn't do the whole Way of the Master thing.

I started going to church steadily. It was a church that was definitely theologically perverted. It was one of those non-denominational churches. And, you know, the whole altar call thing.

The whole thing.

Okay, alright.

So...

I just want to know...

Theology progressed over time, and as I began to study the original language of the New Testament, I began to become more theologically consistent with its teachings.

Okay, James, I'm just trying to understand...

You know,.

It's an unusual thing to encounter someone and when you talk about very short periods of time and radical changes in world view and stuff like that, normally that involves some kind of...

It wasn't a radical change.

Like I said,.

It was a process. Kind of like dying.

Yeah.

So, there are bits and pieces here and there that would stick in my mind and accumulate and I just could not, no longer, do the mental jumping jacks.

You know,.

And I had two choices. I could either say,.

Well, you know,.

I'll just figure it out all in one day.

You know,.

God will just... I'll just trust God here and, you know, all these things will... But, what it came down to is, for me to say that would be highly irrational. What's the difference between me and a Jehovah's Witness and someone else who has a world view that is based off of just believing in something without sufficient evidence?

Okay.

I hear you, James. We'd have to have a discussion, maybe we'll have a discussion sometime in the future on what is evidence and how you support evidence. But, I appreciate your phone call today and I think everybody in the audience also appreciate it, too.

Thank you for calling today.

Thank you.