Christians Challenge an Atheist on Objective Truth

Apologia Utah

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00:00

If everyone is good, then are you saying, like, the people who are bad make those decisions, and maybe don't feel that?

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Like, what's up with that? Okay, so, we would say that everyone is bad. Okay. Sure.

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Yeah, might as well. Yeah, just right out with that. So, God says of us, in the

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Book of Romans, again, He says that there's no one who seeks after God, all have sinned, all have fallen short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death.

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So, all of us are in the same boat. We're all sinners against the holy God that created us. Okay. So, we're all bad.

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And we needed Christ, the God, from all eternity. So, John 1 .1

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says that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And then later in the chapter, he says, and the

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Word became flesh. So, he's talking about Jesus. And he says, and so Jesus, who eternally existed with the essence of God, the being of God, stepped into his creation upon flesh, humbled himself, became a man, and then he paid the sins for his people.

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He died on the cross. So, we needed the perfect God -man to die in our place because we're not good.

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So, that gains us, trusting in the sacrifice that Christ made on our behalf, gains us peace with the

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God we've sinned against. So, our basis for our mortal claims is going to be based on God's Word.

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So, we recognize, yeah, we do presuppose that God exists. We do presuppose that the Bible is the

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Word of God. And it goes back to what I said earlier. It's because of the absurdity of the contrary, right? And so, you were going on to talk about the morality that you hold to because of your parents teaching you.

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Would you say that they taught you right? Sure, yeah. That says that. Have a good night, guys.

01:46

By right, I guess. See you on Sunday. Yeah, see ya. Because as an atheist, right, in the grand scheme of things, what does that mean by right?

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So, I don't believe in a grand, like, there's not going to be a grand jury when I go.

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In my belief, in my presupposition. I don't really believe that there's going to be. I'm going to get to those pearly gates and, you know,

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I'm going to be the judge. Do you believe in an afterlife at all? No, I don't. So, no afterlife? No. So, would you say you're a materialist in the sense of the word?

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Like, I was born basically of materials of the earth and, like, I will die and become the materials of the earth.

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Would you say that? Yeah, I'd say so. But I don't think that means that we don't have an obligation to become the best people we can be, right?

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And to try to advance and create, you know, and help others, right?

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So, I would argue that Hitler was on the same track. He was trying to create the greatest race.

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Well, I'm not saying we're trying to create the greatest race. But that was his goal, right? Yeah. In his society, it was better to be white and blonde -haired blue -eyed.

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Like, he had an idea in his mind, and he did a very horrible thing to a whole lot of people.

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Why is he not? What type of spider was it? Well, he's not right. Well, but you talk about societally. Everything he did was legal in Germany.

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Yeah, sure. To an extent. Everything was societally accepted. Sure, I get what you're—

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Within his society. So, you can't use a societal argument. But in your core, you know that what he did was legal.

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Sure, yeah. That's what I mean. Yeah, but he wasn't—he's not looking at it from, like, a worldview.

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You know what I mean? He's not looking at it like we're all one people. He was looking at it as we are all different people, and this one group is the best.

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Right? Of the whole. This is a section that is pure and great and perfect. Yeah, and he was trying to kill off everyone else.

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Exactly. And I'm not saying—I don't believe in that at all. I believe we are all one race. No, yeah, we never say that you do it.

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I'm actually really glad. Just to be clear, I wasn't saying that you do it.

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I was just—like, I could see a similarity of, like— The reason we bring that up is because, obviously, the

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Hitler statement is—you know, there's, like, that statement online. Whoever brings up Hitler in an argument is the first person. Because he's obviously the perfect example of whoever's done one of the most evil stuff in all of human history.

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The reason we bring that up is, as you said, materialism, right? Materialism is sort of your basis for all that you believe.

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How do you explain the immaterial, which would include moral values, which would include things we can't touch, like laws of logic?

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How do we—why would we use those things in a materialist universe at all?

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If all that we are is flesh and bones, if all that we are is bags of stardust or atoms just bouncing around aimlessly and pointlessly, why would we use any non -immaterial things to do anything?

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Why would we try and use them? Like, we use laws of logic, right? We can't touch them or feel them. The point

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I bring up with the moral values is that's not something we can feel or touch. It just is. And so, what basis,

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I guess, would we, as a materialist, say that anything is right or wrong, other than it just makes me feel good?

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Right, sure. Well, I mean, humans are unlike any other creatures or species, right?

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Like, the fundamental view of any species is, you know, survive and reproduce, right?

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Like, humans have higher brain function that allows us to have more complex thoughts.

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But I don't think having complex thoughts and trying to make, like, sense of that—

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I think that's kind of where religion comes from in the first place. We're also the only species that has religion, right?

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Like, I don't think that— Presumably. Well, sure. I've never talked about it. My dog is also an atheist.

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Well, he probably doesn't believe in God, I would imagine. But, well, all dogs go to heaven. Oh, that's true.

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Yeah, that's true. But, you know, like, I think as, like, our nature as humans, biologically, will lead us to think about things that are higher and beyond us.

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And so, I think our ideas of advancement, like our logic, our emotions, all these things that would allow us to have those conversations are also what allowed us to create religion amongst people.

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Right. When you say the laws of logic, would you say that we've created the laws of logic? Uh, yeah,

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I'd say so. Okay. What do you mean by that? I'd say that there is, like, forces within the world, right, of—

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Maybe that's a good amount of fabric of thought. Let me ask a question. Would you say 2 plus 2 equals 4 if no humans and no life was on Earth?

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Yeah, that's it. So you didn't create them, because that would be— Well, I would say we created that understanding of that.

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Okay. So we discovered— We discovered it, yeah. But it was already there. But it was there. Yeah, exactly. It preexisted us, and we're in the universe.

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That clarifies that. Yeah. So those forces transcend humanity. Yeah, I mean, we are trying to understand the world around us.

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We didn't create a tree, you know what I mean? But we're trying to understand it and trying to figure out what we can use it for, right?

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Yeah. Now, those existed before us. Yeah. I don't think God created them.

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I think within this cosmos of random chance and probability that they were created, right?

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And the framework of understanding that is just physics, which I'm not— I'm not trying to claim my understanding of that.

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No, you're good, you're good. Would you say that we shouldn't use, from your perspective, would you say that we shouldn't use anything that can't be proven by science?

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Uh, no. Yeah. Okay, good. I would say we can use—we should use everything that's out there, right?

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Just because we don't understand it. Materially or immaterially? I mean, both. Right? Like, religion, I don't think is bad.

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Also, that's my firm stance on that. I don't believe it's real in the sense of, like, my understanding and how

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I make it. Like, I understand the universe. It's not real to me. Again, like, if you interpret, you use logic to understand things in a different frame, right?

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I think there's a way. There's some other world, some other possibility where 2 plus 2 doesn't equal 4, and we have a different understanding of mathematics, right?

08:40

I think the same could exist about religion, right? I'm kind of rambling, man. Again, I am—

08:46

That's usually my job, actually. Thanks for that. I'm trying to make an understanding of it in this moment. I had a question in my head.

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Yeah, please. I feel like I lost it. Well, I'll circle back real quick. So, we do use,

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I think, everything. Or we try to. And if we don't understand it, we create a theory about it until that theory's proven wrong.

09:07

Then we learn and we create a new theory about it. Would that— You call what you're talking about the law of science?

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Sure, yeah. You call that sort of like hypotheses, testing, proving the result kind of thing? No, you have to have—

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But you have to be able to do that. You have to presuppose certain things to be able to do that in the first place, right?

09:28

Yeah, sure. Like this logic, right? Sure, yeah, okay. And so, the place where we come from—

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And I'm curious what your thoughts are on this, right? The reason we— Going back to what I have repeated myself a third time now.

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The reason we believe in God is because we do so to do the contrary. And one of our examples that we— You know, I always like to point to is, you know, why would you believe in something that's immaterial, right?

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If all that exists is material that we can see, right? Why would you presuppose something that we can't feel, we can't taste, we can't touch, but it shows consistency in the universe?

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And where I'm coming from is I'm like, that would be— God exists because the laws of logic exist.

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Not conditionally, I'm saying, but I would say that the reason we can make sense of the universe, the reason we have consistency—

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Like a question I'd ask is, why aren't you floating upright now? Why do you trust that the next step you take, gravity is going to have its intended effect every single time?

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Why, when we squeeze our toothpaste bottle, does toothpaste come out every time and not a uniform, right? There's consistency that we can trust in the universe that we have to assume to be able to do anything with science, to be able to do anything materially consistently without it turning into absurdity.

10:37

Yeah. And so, I'm curious, what are your thoughts on— So my thoughts kind of on that is, like, that is a framework for understanding it.

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You know what I mean? Like, this idea that God exists and created everything, and like, he's the reason that all of that operates the way it does, right?

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I think that's one framework for understanding it. And I think it's, like, as valid as the next, right?

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If you're saying that's your framework, the contrary to that is there is no God. Well, maybe that's just an additional framework to look at, like a lens to look at everything through, right?

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If I'm looking at it and saying, yeah, it all kind of, let's say, Big Bang, you know, that's how the universe was created, all the scientific discoveries, that's my framework.

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I'm not opposed to this idea, like, if there is a new understanding, a new proof that puts that framework into place, like,

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I'm not against that. I don't think that is ever possible. I don't think it's ever possible to have proof of that.

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And I know some people would say the Bible is proof of that, right? I'm kind of going to go a different way.

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So, like, you're looking for kind of a scientific proof, right? Like, something that is testable.

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Or maybe a logical proof. Or a logical proof. But if God transcends the universe and is outside of it because he is its creator, and he is completely transcendent, completely other, then there is no way for us to know him aside from him revealing himself to us.

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So we believe that God is transcendent. He is eternally existent before the universe was ever created.

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Like I said, he's spoken into existence. So God must reveal himself to us for us to know anything.

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And then, in his word, he says he has by the world around us, by our conscience within us, and then, furthermore, through his word.

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We have scriptures that are consistent. And, like, we seek for consistency.

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Yes, we recognize that we have presuppositions. We presuppose God. We presuppose that the

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Bible is his word. Like, those are foundational for us. But at the same time, if you look into things like Buddhism or Taoism, you can plainly see contradiction.

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Like, I want to say it's Buddhism that they're trying to get to... It's either Buddhism or Hinduism that they're trying to get to Nirvana.

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Which is a state of oneness where all differentiation ceases. So, I'm in Nirvana.

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Because you and I are the same. You can make a certain claim as well. It's impossible to reach

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Nirvana. Because then... If everything is

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God or if everything is Nirvana, then you can say you're in Nirvana now. So what are you trying to achieve? It's not a...

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It's internally contradictory to itself. So there's things like that throughout pretty much any religion that's man -made.

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That's the basis at the end of the day of our claims. Our goal is to point out where we come from.

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We have God's word. And where we are coming from, God's word was vindicated when Jesus died on the cross and there was an empty tomb.

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Our statement of fact that vindicates all of what was spoken by God is the empty tomb and what Jesus spoke.

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We can compare world views in regards to atheism, Islam, Hinduism, whatever world view you come up with.

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But the question is which one of us is going to be able to justify the values that we hold and the things that we do and the purpose that we try and find in life consistently.

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And we would probably say that God's word says that. God's word is the only one that can fulfill that claim of perfect consistency.

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And so that's why we ask these questions about Hitler and moral values and things like that. Our goal is to just point out...

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You're created in God's image. You're living in his world and you can't help but to live like you're created in his image. You have moral values and you can't help it.

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You see things that outrage you. Whatever it may be, whatever evil that you see and makes you go, that's disgusting,

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I hate that. It's there. You see things that make you go, oh I love that.

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There are people that you love. There's stuff that's intangible within you that you cannot avoid.

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You presuppose that when you swing your feet out of bed you're not going to hit the floor. Because gravity is. It's a presupposition that you have.

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And because you're living in God's world and you recognize that it is not a random world, there's so much order to the world.

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If it was random, like... The fact that if we were just a little bit closer to the sun, we'd burn up.

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Or if we were a little further away, we'd freeze to death. It can't be random.

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There is so much order to our universe that randomness is a...

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It's an answer of faith. To believe that something so orderly came from chaos, there's a lot of faith in believing that.

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You know what I mean? Yeah. Think of it as sort of being like a video game. Like, if I'm playing a video game,

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I'm not thinking, you know, this is something that just sort of happened naturally through some kind of natural process.

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I'm thinking there was a whole team of significantly overworked people who had to sit here and write all of these lines of code and all these scripts and everything and put together this massive thing.

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And I can tell because I'm seeing the order in it and the apparent design and purpose.

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When we shift that over to how we think of the universe, I'm thinking it's like that but on such an unthinkably massive scale.

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No matter how deep you want to go into the construction of the atom, which at some point people thought was going to be the smallest thing in all of existence until they split it in half and some stuff happened.

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I don't know what. But then you go, you know, on the major scale, you're looking at like galaxies and all this kind of stuff.

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And it's like there is this coherence that I don't think we can...

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I mean, if we're going to say, well, the book that you hold in your hand that has all these words that somehow make sense is definitely written by an author or the video game that you're playing has so much coherence and apparent purpose that you can't just attribute that to, you know, chat

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GBT or whatever. Why wouldn't we do the same thing with... With the internet and spit out a game.

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Yeah. And to be fair, one thing that, you know, at the end of the day, all of us interpret the evidence that we receive through a lens, through our presuppositions as we call it.

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We totally are open about our presuppositions. Any evidence we have is going to be presented through the presupposition that God already exists.

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And I know that might seem unfair to a lot of people, but I think we do that all the time in our life with everything and so forth.

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I know a lot of people, when they say they want evidence of God, there's a funny comment that was made by this one, you know, atheist that said, if God wrote in the heavens,

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God exists, right? Perfectly in red sharpie, right? God exists. Then I would believe. And Christian responded politely.

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He was like, well, how do you know that you wouldn't just say I'm hallucinating, right? At that point, and just have a rescuing device at the end of the day, just to get out of whatever evidence you're in.

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So we recognize at the end of the day, any evidence we present or we show you, at the end of the day, it's going to be come down to faith in Christ and belief in the word.

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And that's why we're out here. That's why we're talking to LDS neighbors and our atheist neighbors, kind atheist neighbors,

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I might add. I appreciate you. We have people that are not nice. And so I appreciate you. No, I've really enjoyed this conversation.

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It's challenged me to think, I mean, more intentionally about what

19:02

I believe. I think we, you know, believe different things. Absolutely.

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I mean, the framework that I view things is different than the framework. Everybody's biased. But it's also like, at the end of the day, it's a choice to be in one framework or the other.

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That's true. You have to accept certain principles and truths into your world.

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And no matter what you choose to believe, there's always going to be consequences.

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Sounds like a harsh word, but it's like there's an advantage or a reason for why people choose the frameworks or the religions or the worldviews that they do.

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And it's not as simple as, you know, we're not computers. It's not just like, well, somebody puts in the information and you just sort of compute it.

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It's like there's a heart issue. You know, there's a wanting to believe this, that, and the other thing.

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And I think we've all had experiences like that where you're like, I really don't want to believe this thing, but I'm just seeing so much evidence for it.

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And, you know, nobody likes that. Or like, I really want to continue believing this thing, but I just know it's not true.

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And that's how life goes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like we said, our ultimate reason for being out here is because at the end of the day, all of us have to contend with death.

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And we believe that we're going to stand before God who created us, gives us every blessing, every good gift that comes from God.

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And so every breath we take, every hug we get to have with our parents, every friend that we get to spend time with, all of those good things are gifts from God.

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And we don't want to see our neighbors rejecting the giver and accepting the gifts.

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Because that leads to, you may have a great life here, but there is life eternal.

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And it's either in condemnation and punishment, or it's in Christ and it's in His righteousness.

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And it's at peace with the God who created you. And it's not like we're here to just put you from one worldview to a different worldview.

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It's like, if we believe what we do and we do, then there is an eternity that awaits for you.

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And there's also a life here now. And what Jesus said is that He came to give people life abundantly.

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And we're like, what we want isn't just that you would believe certain statements as being true.

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I don't know what I'm doing with my hands right now. But like, what we want is that God would show

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Himself to you as He actually is. Not just, you know, that you go from atheist to theist, technically.

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Like, that you would benefit from knowing Him. Like, you know, a lot of us know really cool people and we're like,

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Hey, I wish, like, you should meet this person because you would just get along great. But it's like that, but writ large.

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And like, we just want you to know who He is. Colton, right?

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Jared. Jared? Wow. I was repeating in my mind the whole time. Wow. That's funny though.

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Oh, you know what? Colton was the guy over there. Oh, Colton was the, he was the guy that was over. No, that's our

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Jacob, Eric, and Ryan. Ryan. We were never introduced, so you would be okay. Jared, thank you. Nice to meet you all.