Just War, Combat, and Atheism

Non -rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it!

Are you going to bark all day, little doggie? Or are you going to bite? Delusional.

Delusional is okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional.

So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. Is he hung up on me?

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies.

Disciples. I got a bit of a jibble neck. That's a joke, pastor.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

Blessed be the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.

What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. You guys can get more at ApologiaStudios .com.

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Do be sure to go to ApologiaStudios .com. Make sure you guys check out all the really great podcasts that are productions of Apologia Studios.

We've got Sheologians with Joy and Summer. You've got Provoked with Pastor Zach and Desi.

And you've got Cultish with Super Sleuthed, Super Excited, Andrew Songkrant, and Jeremiah Roberts.

Cultish. Go check them out, guys. They're all there at ApologiaStudios .com. That's where you guys go. I'm Jeff the Combat Ninja, and that's

Luke the Bear. What up? Welcome back, everybody, to another episode. Hope you guys enjoyed last week's episode as much as we enjoyed making it for you guys.

If you didn't see it, go check it out. It is an entire show on Book of Revelation and overarching themes really throughout the

Bible and time stuff. If you guys are really into that, I think you'll really enjoy it. So I had a busy week last week back in town, still trying to recover.

Stuff for end abortion now. Some important meetings. Good stuff happening in Florida for working towards the criminalization of abortion.

Got to go to the historic spot, for me anyways, for us.

John Barros, the man who has inspired so many to save so many lives. He saved thousands of children from death outside of the

Orlando Women's Center. Of course, we've seen it. Babies are murdered here, and babies are still murdered here.

We help produce Babies Are Still Murdered Here, and of course, it's in that film. If you haven't seen Babies Are Still Murdered Here, make sure you guys go check it out.

I've seen video, I've seen content footage, just really cool stuff, but never been there personally.

It was a really cool experience to get to be at the location that John Barros has ministered outside of for about 16 years.

R .C. Sproul, actually, the late Dr. R .C. Sproul, used to actually sit out there on occasion just to watch

John Barros preach at that location. So many thousands of lives have been saved.

The amazing thing, too, we haven't even talked about this yet, is just how close you are. You are close, close to everybody going in and out.

They can't avoid you in any way, and there's no way they can't hear you. You're right there. It honestly feels like it's as far from here to that wall right over there.

Of course, it's sad. Being that close, you're also really close. You have close contact with when the women have the surgery to kill their children, and the boyfriends or husbands come to pick them up.

They're walking right past you, and they're stumbling their way out. It's very impactful.

You're allowed to walk to the side of the building. The abortionist is outside. One of the nurses is outside, and the guys are out there talking to them.

It really is just such a blessing. But for those of you who didn't see the

Facebook video that I put out, the live video outside the Orlando Women's Center, many of you guys may have heard that John Barrows has been out there for so long ministering, much of the time standing on crutches, that he has literally worn down the sidewalk right in front of the door where he preaches the gospel to the mothers and fathers that are in there.

It's distinct. You can see it. I hope that when abortion is criminalized there, they build a monument there because it's worthy of it.

But that was a really moving experience. And yeah, I did some other stuff in Florida. It was a busy, busy week.

My brain feels like mush this week. So I'm going to give it my best. I'm going to give it my best. I wonder if when they close that place down, if we can snatch up that piece of concrete.

You know what I'm saying? That would be cool. Just build something out of it. I wouldn't be doing that. It's pretty heavy.

Yeah, it probably would be very heavy. But this is what I'd be doing too. So yeah, it was a great experience.

And I'll tell you what was not a great experience, and you had to deal with this recently, was flying on a plane across country for four hours with a diaper on my face.

Did you wear it the whole time? Well, I took advantage of the, if you're actively eating or drinking.

I literally held a bottle of water next to my face. Yeah. So they walked, I was like.

Yeah, exactly. No, so in order to be able to breathe like a human being, you have to pretend like you're eating or drinking.

Just hold it right there by your face. Several times I just started to get dizzy, and I had to pull it down to gas for air.

I mean, you're on an airplane, which is already stuffy enough as it is. You've got the air pressure. I mean, all that's going on, and you've got this mask over your face for four hours.

I mean, it's a nightmare experience. I will say that Arizona seems a little bit more lenient on the masks than Florida.

Florida was pretty intense. And Michigan. Yeah, you were in Michigan, and they're pretty intense there too. And Indiana too, yeah.

But you see the numbers are going down in Arizona. They just opened the bars in the old tubing and back up.

Yeah, they opened it back up. Swim in your fecal river.

Fecal river, yes. Salt River is fecal river. So they opened it back up. I was trying to think of a politically correct way to say that.

There's a lot of brown trout. Yeah, that's right. Brown trout. Brown trout station. Brown trout river. Yeah. All right.

Oh, gosh. Anyway, today we are going to be on here talking about combat martial arts.

We're going to talk about some just war theory stuff. I also wanted to just spend a moment here because a lot of this relates to the issue of just war theory.

I think it would be important to talk about this. We're going to talk about some atheism, Richard Dawkins, some interaction with Greg Bonson's teachings against naturalism and materialism on the issue of free will.

Then I'm going to play a little bit of a clip from a discussion I had with an atheist on our podcast show here we have called

Provoked. And I'm going to show you a really kind of a funny—I think it's a funny, funny clip.

It's this liberal journalist that ends up actually face to face with a cannibalistic tribe. That hopefully will bring us into the discussion about just war theory because I think it all relates.

Christianity can give you a theory of just war and what's right, what's wrong.

If you don't have the biblical worldview, you don't have a justification to call anything just in the first place.

And the whole concept of war, I mean, in materialism and naturalism, I mean, isn't it might for right?

I mean, isn't that kind of the thing, might for right? What's the point of talking about just war theory? What's right? What should we involve ourselves in?

Should we police the world? Those sorts of things. The biblical worldview can provide for you a foundation to talk about just war theory and those sorts of things.

And, of course, I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about martial arts, combat arts, because recently we did some self -defense stuff for our church, the men of our church.

We're going to do some for the women. We put it up just to benefit everybody because we did it, might as well bless the world.

I found out some kids actually in Florida I met while I was preaching, a family said that their kids watched it and trained actually with it, which is kind of cool.

Are they using Wade as, sorry, I'm pointing to Wade who you can't see over there, but using him as their pretend dummy?

I've drawn a little picture of him, just putting it on a punching bag. So, anyway, we put it up and a lot of comments were saying things like martial arts is pagan, it's occultic.

People were also suggesting that Christians should not train in combat sports or the martial arts, combat arts.

Martial science is not something Christians need to be involved in. I thought that was a really very unbiblical and poor position to take personally, and not just because I have five black belts, but because of what

I know about the martial arts and when we think about what it means to love your neighbor, we need to protect and preserve life.

I saw some comments even saying things like if you saw somebody being raped or beaten as a

Christian, you just need to, that's of the world, that sort of a thing.

Evil people in this world and God's sheep are going to be God's sheep, we're just going to get sheared, baby. So, I saw all kinds of things like that.

So, welcome everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome everybody. Thank you everyone in the comments commenting.

Glad you guys joined us for today's episode. So, let's get right into it, shall we? Let me get this turned down here for a second and let's get right into the first part of the discussion.

Let's start with the theory of knowledge and people having wills or making choices.

This is a really good clip and it is Richard Dawkins. The first part is Richard Dawkins.

He's engaging on the issue of naturalism or materialism, talking about human will.

Are humans making choices or are we just the byproducts of a universe that didn't have us in mind? Are the choices we make just the result of chemical responses and we can't help being what we are?

In other words, well, I'll let you hear it. I think Greg Bonson's lecture does a really good job of demonstrating the self -defeating nature of naturalism in terms of human wills.

And, by the way, when we talk about the issue of human will and free will choices in this discussion, it is very different from the free will discussion, soteriologically speaking, when we talk about, say, the issue of Arminianism versus Calvinism or monergism versus synergism.

If you don't know what those words mean, we've done some sermons recently at Apologia Church. Go check them out on the

Doctrines of Grace. So, just really important, Christians, have to think of categories here. The philosophical discussion about free will in terms of the discussion of naturalism and materialism is not the same discussion as free will soteriologically or in the

Doctrine of Salvation between, say, a Pelagian and a

Calvinist. It's very, very different discussions, different categories, and so not the same thing.

So, if you guys are in the comments right now or you guys are listening to this, you're thinking, well, I believe in free will. I believe

Jesus gives us will. It's our choice to trust in Jesus. We can do that. Just know, this is not that discussion. This is a discussion of whether human beings are making choices at all.

And so, let's get into it. This is, again, Dr. Richard Dawkins. I suppose,

Dr. Dawkins, I would ask this to you. Is there a scientific basis for the concept of free will in human beings?

And, if not, is there a biological evolutionary reason why all of us believe we have free will?

The late Christopher Hitchens, when asked, does he believe in free will, replied, I have no choice.

It's a question that I dread, actually, because I don't have a very well -thought -out view about it.

Yeah. I appreciate that moment of integrity and that moment of honesty from Dawkins.

I dread this question because I don't have a good answer. At least he's honest for once. Yeah. Think about it.

You might be saying, well, why wouldn't he have a good answer? Doesn't he know he's a person who's making choices? When Dawkins is out with his wife –

I believe he's married. Yeah, he is. When Dawkins is out with his wife and his wife is like, where are we going to eat tonight?

And she's like, how about Chinese? And he's like, no, I'm thinking fish and chips. I'd rather have fish and chips. Or making a decision to go this way or that way.

I would think that Dawkins believes that's a willing choice. He's making choices. He's not just the subject of biochemical responses that are firing in his brain, the laws of physics acting on matter.

I would think he understands, like, these are real choices I'm making. But it's interesting here because if you think about his perspective of the world, reality, here's the deal.

And you might be saying, what in the world does this have to do with just war theory and warfare and all the rest? Everything has to do with whether or not we're making choices and those choices are meaningful at all.

Or are we just bags of meat going into combat with each other? It's all related, so it's a foundational issue.

If the man believes, and he does, that we're African apes, and he's very, very strong.

Bonobos is the correct term he uses. Yes. He's very, very convinced of that himself, that we're just African apes, that we're just stardust.

He's with Sagan and all the other guys that would say, you know, we're all just stardust in a universe that didn't have us in mind.

If you take that perspective, one must ask, well, if that's what we are, if we're just a bunch of meat bags firing chemical responses in our brains, well, then are we really making choices?

Are we just a slave to our biochemical responses? Are we just slaves to our own nature in terms of material, just stuff?

I mean, is there any meaning in all this? Any real choices being made by us? Or can we just not help it?

And that's where the joke comes from, by the way. Christopher Hitchens is an atheist, and someone says, you know, do you believe in free will?

And he says, well, I have no other choice. In other words, it's a deterministic perspective that because it's a material universe,

I can't help it. I mean, it's a mixed conversation, but they don't really have an answer.

And I do appreciate that he's honest enough to say, I dread this question. I understand why you do, because you don't have a worldview that can make sense of a human soul.

You don't have a worldview that can make sense of something that actually transcends the material and is beyond just the matter, molecules, and atoms that you have in front of you.

So, anything you want to add to that, Luke? I was just going to ask if he called it

Chinese food, because it comes from China. China. China. China. I think that,

I mean, I have a materialist view of the world. I think that things are determined in a rational way by antecedent events.

And so, that commits me to the view that when

I think I have free will, when I think that I'm exercising free choice, I'm deluding myself, that my brain states are determined by physical events.

And yet, that seems to contradict, to go against the very powerful subjective impression that we all have, that we do have free will.

I think all I can do is recommend the works of my colleague Daniel Dennett on the subject, which are fascinating.

And there's a new book, another one of our colleagues, Sam Harrison, Free Will, is coming out. Yes. But I also have to agree that I think...

Well, this is an important area for them to start to delve into and to provide answers for, because if you take the premises that they give to you, given their worldview and the framework that they give to you, naturally, it's going to start to bring out the questions of the students.

Well, if all this is true, and it's just a material universe, well, then the choices that I'm making, are they really my choices?

Are these really choices that I'm... What's an I in that worldview in the first place, that I am freely making?

And of course, if you can follow Duncan's worldview there, in terms of the thought processes, the decisions that he's making, first of all, he doesn't believe there's any ultimate moral ought above any of those decisions.

They're just decisions. Left, right, up, down, yes, no. I mean, that's essentially what we're boiling this down to.

He says he follows a scientific or a materialistic perspective. There has to be a rational reason for getting to point

A to point B. And then all events are because of antecedent events. All that language, simply to say this, you have a cause and an effect relationship.

Well, what's the cause of my thoughts? Well, it's the physical stuff that's right here. It's all the physical stuff.

So if a decision was made, a movement was made this direction, I want to follow the causal chain that got me to that decision.

And all I get here is a material universe with physical laws acting upon matter.

That's what he said. So basically, the decisions he's making are just ultimately the result of physical, naturalistic processes upon the material nature, and you've just got stuff that's happening.

So now, let me move ahead here to this little clip here. This is Dr. Greg Bonson from a lecture that he gave on naturalism and the issue of free will.

Here is Dr. Bonson. Let me talk about freedom in our thinking. If naturalism is true, that is, that all that exists is the natural order and there isn't anything that goes beyond man's experience in time, if naturalism is true, then the naturalist has no reason to believe his naturalism.

You write that down and I'll explain why it's true. If naturalism is true, the naturalist has no reason to believe it.

Has no reason to believe it. Because, you see, naturalism says all of our thinking is just electrical, chemical responses.

All of our thinking is subject to the laws of chemistry and physics, which is to say all of our thinking is determined by the factors in the physical world or in the physical brain and the environment around us.

All of our thinking is, in principle, predictable then because it's just following the laws of nature, usually, more sophisticatedly put, the laws of physics and biology and chemistry and so forth.

But the point is, human thinking is just the species of the physical world in its operation.

Human thinking is just, it's on the same order, but not the same level of sophistication, as weeds growing.

And so if naturalism is true, then the person who is propounding it is propounding it, why?

Because his or her brain has required them, by the laws of physics and chemistry and biology, to say this sort of thing.

It's not as though they have the freedom and self -awareness to think about different theories, evaluate evidence, and make a choice as to which is right or wrong.

They just have to say whatever they have to say. And that's why the irony is that a naturalist would promote naturalism and try to tell people it's true.

You should believe that and not supernaturalism. The answer is, if naturalism is true, so that your brain is just working on the laws of physics, then you have no reason to believe naturalism is true.

It's just the laws of physics requiring you to say that. Which is just to say, if naturalism is true, there's no reason to say that naturalism is true.

And, kaboom! An amazing polemic against naturalism, materialism.

It's an internal critique of the system itself. And you can hear here, watch, this is

Bonson. I don't even know when this was. My goodness, this looks like it's like late 80s, maybe early 90s, something like that.

Here we have about a 30 -year -old video, Dr. Greg Bonson, hero and giant of the faith. If you don't know him, you need to get to know him, please.

And we'd love to help you do that. But here is a video 30 years ago, internal critique of naturalism in terms of the idea of free will.

Now, 30 years later -ish, you've got a video of Dawkins and Krauss, who is a local,

Dawkins and Krauss talking about the issue, and Dawkins admitting, I don't like this.

I don't like this question. Well, yeah, because if what you say is true about the world, then there's no reason to believe your theory.

And what's the difference between picking one theory over another in the naturalistic mindset?

You've just got stuff happening in your brain. You're just a result of the forces that are acting upon the material and the choices that you're making and the theories that you're evaluating.

One's not true over another. One's not ultimate. And there's no moral component to any of it.

So why do you need to tell the truth about any of it when you're examining it? So there's so many layers to this. Materialism, naturalism is easily refuted within its own framework.

Answer the fool according to their folly, lest they be wise in their own conceit. Proverbs 26, verse 4 and 5.

Take a look at that in terms of how to answer the fool. I was just going to say they can't escape some form of determinism.

That would be their critique against Christianity. Well, God is, you know, you robots, and God determines everything.

Even like creation or the beginning of life itself. They still can't escape.

Even if they go with the Big Bang Theory, there's still something there prior. Where did that come from?

They just don't like. The point is that they don't like our answer. And they have the same internal problem that they have to answer for.

They just don't have an answer. They don't like our answer. Right, exactly. They refuse to acknowledge the

God that they clearly know. And so they have to construct very, very interesting theories.

So here's a guy. Think about what you just watched with Dawkins. Just think about it. Here's a guy who's like, I don't like the implications of this question.

I don't like having to answer this. Because my worldview says that it's just a materialist world.

A materialistic perspective of all of reality. There's nothing transcendent. There's nothing outside of the physical realm and the material.

Which means that all of us are just the result of all these chemical processes. But dang it, I'd really like to have some personality in this.

You know what I'm saying? I'm up here. Everyone reads my books. We're talking like there's interaction between us that's meaningful.

And I'm a person who has value and dignity. And so are you. And truth matters.

We've got to fight for truth. I'm up here talking about truth and science and evidence and logic and reason.

And yet I don't have a worldview that comports with any of those claims. And so, boy,

I really don't like this question. Well, yeah, it just exposed you as a rebel against your creator.

And your answers are bootleg and stupid. And Dawkins' worldview is foolish.

He's a fool. And I don't mean that, of course. Biblically speaking, calling someone a fool is not meant to simply be like name -calling.

But it's meant to describe the spiritual condition and intellectual condition of a person who refuses to acknowledge what's obvious to everybody.

And so he's a fool. And his worldview is foolish. So, okay. So the first thing I wanted to do is

I wanted to lay that down in terms of perspectives. You've got the atheistic, materialistic, naturalistic perspective that can't even justify decision -making.

Do you see what that boils down to? The question of free will is just decision -making. Is this me really deciding to make this decision?

Am I really evaluating a theory here, one over against another? Or am I just sort of happening in the universe?

Is any of this meaningful? Is this discussion meaningful? Well, from his perspective, not really. So that's the question of choices and free will.

The next one I wanted to just play, just to show you, again, perspectives, biblical worldview over and against another system, is a discussion we had recently on Provoked with an atheist.

And I'll just play through it because something very interesting happened. If you didn't catch it, go catch it. It happened recently.

Just look on our thread here. Provoked. I think it's just labeled

Jeff Durbin versus an atheist. Okay. So go look for that. It's a long discussion, an hour and 40 minutes long, just about.

But in this discussion, the atheist was supposed to come on and debate. I don't know. It was supposed to debate abortion.

Right. But as soon as we started to get right past it, it was like, well, he doesn't even believe there's a moral foundation to anything at all.

Right. So it's like, all right, well, you're on here arguing that abortion is a moral decision and we ought to allow abortions, but your atheism says that there is no ultimate right or wrong, so what are you doing here?

Well, pressing him and pressing him and pressing him to inconsistency, finally he confesses to cannibalism as not really morally wrong, as long as you dispatch the person quickly and be sure to clean your plates, folks, which is what he said.

I'm not kidding. You guys probably right now are like, he did not say that. Go watch the episode. That's exactly what he said.

So I'll play the clip here. I can't play all of it, but just some of it. Yeah, because you both—

It's a natural design. You will use— What I see, it's a beautiful, natural thing that happens. So just—

I don't see in fossils how it happens. Well, just as a— How nature affects it. Just a point.

A couple things out here. When we talk about morality, you say it's arbitrary. You say there's no ultimate. Never has been an ultimate morality, but then you keep saying that there are things that somebody ought to do or ought not to do.

As a matter of fact, I would say you're being on the show today, and I mean this with a humble respect and love towards you because I do appreciate you and I do respect you, but you're on a show today to argue about what ought to be done in the issue of abortion while you're saying there's never been a moral ought.

And then you're using words like design. I would ask you, do you know of any other time in your experience where somebody would call something design that didn't have a designer?

I would say all of this shows you are inescapably, inescapably in God's image, and you're trying very hard as a unique and beautiful creation of God to live in God's world apart from Him, but it can't be done.

And the problem is sin. Same God. We just can't— We will try very hard to construct sophisticated worldviews to get away from the knowledge of our

Creator. We'll say there's no ultimate morality, but then we'll complain about somebody stealing from us.

We'll say there's no ultimate morality, but then we'll tell somebody that slavery is wrong. We'll say there's no ultimate morality, but then we'll decry injustice and we'll glory in the phenomenal design and creation of the world and then say, although in this case, nobody's behind it.

It's a worldview that sort of collapses and folds in upon itself. Do you see? No, I don't.

I see it as— I get what you're saying. I understand the argument that you're putting, but I still, like—

And also, I'll say it to the—as respectfully as I can, too, that, yeah, like,

I appreciate— I can appreciate the kind words and everything, you know, but I don't, like—

No, I don't think that I'm created by God or anything. I'm created by my parents.

Like, that's it. I'm a genetic combo of my parents, and I don't think that this world, as beautiful as it is, then, like,

I don't think, like, I can see how it happened naturally. Like, there are natural explanations for every single thing that we see, even up to morality, as in, like, because it's a social construct.

Ah, it's a social construct. We have used it forever. Like, it's been—it's evolved over time from, like, simple types of, like, whatever, caveman days, groups, like, family groups using morality for, like, rudimentary,

I guess, for deciding who gets to eat first or whatever. Like, we're not gonna give the stranger food yet.

We're gonna have the family members eat first, and then eat whatever someone else, like—

Yeah, well, let me—yeah, I guess I'll ask you on that point. I have two questions, but the one

I would ask you is that you live in Texas, right? Yes. So, I would say this is a very loving challenge to you.

You are heavily influenced by and surrounded by the blessings of the Christian worldview that uphold value and dignity and worth for other human beings, that talk about loving our neighbor and those sorts of things, and talk about justice and all those things.

So, I think you've been heavily influenced by the Christian worldview. But I would point to the fact that all over the world today, there are still tribes who kill other human beings and eat them.

But in their society, that's a moral, happy thing. Are they right for that? I don't know that I'd call it—

You argue that it's by societal convention. So, people get together and they determine what's right and what's wrong by convention.

And so, if that is the case, these cannibalistic tribes that exist today, outside of Texas, they still kill people and hunt them and eat them today.

But their society says it's moral. So, is it moral? Because they say that it is? Eh. I don't know that I'd say—

Or only because it's a taboo, basically, from our own culture. So, it's not really wrong.

Eating other people, we honestly do just think it's gross.

What about torturing them, then eating them? How about hunting and killing, and then eating human beings?

Is that moral? If society determines it is? Yeah. It is? Those people will say it is, yeah.

Yeah, but is it moral? Those groups will. Is it moral, according to them? From my perspective,

I don't think it is. Just because— But obviously, they do. Because you just— They're going to do it because they're on their own, they're secluded, and so they're not really under any jurisdiction from another larger group, like other tribes or something, or a bigger government type of idea.

They're going to do what they do. So, I'm going to ask you a question. If you and I, we left the confines of Arizona and Texas, we flew over to one of those tribes and hung out with them for about a year, and we joined them in hunting and killing humans and then eating them, and we returned to Texas and Arizona, would we be moral people at that point?

Because we engaged in hunting and killing and eating humans, but we did it over where it was acceptable? I know that you think we shouldn't do it because it's icky, but something more than icky,

I think, is important when we're talking about morality. So, if we went to some other place and we participated in eating people—

Hunting, killing, and eating, yes. It's okay over there. By convention, they've determined that's moral.

Would we still be moral men when we returned to Texas and Arizona after having engaged in that for a year?

Depends how you see it. Also, I would say it depends on how it was done.

If you're just toying with anything, whether a person or a deer or whatever the case may be, if you're attacking, grabbing it, and just killing it slowly, torturing it or something, toying with it—

So, torturing is wrong based on location? I would say that's wrong because it's just more inflicting pain on something that can feel pain.

It can feel terror. But if you're actually going to dispatch something really quickly and then eat it, and you're going to use the whole thing, you're not going to waste anything, honestly, that's not that bad,

I don't think. So, if I kill and— I told you I wasn't telling tales.

Hunt them, dispatch them, and clean your plates, folks. As long as you do all those things.

Hunt them, dispatch them, and clean your plates. There's nothing really wrong with that. My favorite answer, which

I thought he should have just stuck with, I forget the original question you asked, but he was like, meh, he should have just stuck with that.

That would have been much more acceptable than the rambling he gave you. Now, here's the deal. The reason

I wanted to play that is talking about the discussion of are people making choices in the first place? Can you even evaluate different theories?

We're talking about just war theory. Does it even matter from a terrorist perspective? Only in the Christian world we can make sense of, like, let's examine this.

What's the moral issue here? Are there principles involved you must follow that actually are above all of us?

So, if we go to war with China, Russia, North Korea, whatever the case is, is there a moral standard even above China that the global community can hold

China to and say there's an ultimate standard here? And the U .S., right? The U .N. would say so.

It's their standard. Yeah, exactly. So, the point is, is there a standard that's ultimate in the first place?

And then, look, some people might have thought that, well, Jeff, you know, you're giving an extreme example.

You talk to an atheist. You talk about cannibalism. And, of course, if he's going to be consistent, he's going to say, yeah,

I guess there's nothing really ultimately wrong with it. Just make sure you lick your fingers and clean your plates. Dispatch quickly.

Yeah, maybe, you know, okay, so he's being consistent. But, Jeff, come on now. You're using an extreme example.

Well, brothers and sisters, we have to come to grips with something.

We live in a fallen world. I believe it's a world that's currently under construction. Redemption is going on. The kingdom of Christ is spreading.

Amen, amen, amen. But one of the things I said to him was, did you catch what I said? I said, you know, talking about Texas, I said,

I think that you're just the recipient of the many blessings of the Christian worldview. You haven't been able to shake your Christianity loose in Texas.

Of course. Not even Austin. And not even, yeah, not in Austin yet. Oh, they're getting close. They're getting close.

But when you think about a person that's been the recipient of the benefits of the Christian worldview, who is an atheist currently living in a nation that was so positively influenced by the

Christian worldview, he sees cannibalism as icky. Yeah, taboo was the term he used.

Yeah, but do you know who doesn't see it as icky? Cannibals. These guys right here. Whatever you eat, we'll eat.

Thanks. Okay. Maybe I'll take this off right now and then...

Just, thank you. So I'm going to have to pause it just for a second there, because if I don't pause between videos,

YouTube is just absolutely ridiculous right now with flagging you immediately.

Because you're allowed to have fair use stuff and do commentary on videos, but their stuff right now is so ridiculous, where if you play past 25 or 30 seconds, they shut your video down immediately.

So I'll spend a few moments here talking about, those are cannibals. This is current. This is real life. And you just got to see it.

If you haven't seen this clip, it's one of my favorite clips on the internet. Because here's this CNN journalist stepping out of the benefits of the

Western Christian nations and he enters into cannibalist society. And you just, he's terrified.

He's absolutely terrified. You see his face. And here's the deal. Like, you know, when you say, Jeff, you're being extreme, you're being unfair to the atheists.

No, you live in a Christian bubble. Like, you live in a benefit bubble of the

Christian worldview. It is where you're at. But step outside of that, to the places where Christianity hasn't yet influenced, and you're going to be face to face with cannibals like this dude, who will cut your stinking head off and eat your eyeballs.

And I'm sure he will lick his fingers and clean his plate. I mean, that's just the thing. And I want to know, and here's the thing, as we go back to the clip here.

Look, I want to know, where's the gospel of atheism for this cannibalistic tribe?

Right? Like, there is nothing, there's no moral ought to tell this. There's no good news of justice to the cannibal in front of this

CNN journalist. There's no good news of atheism. No good news of law and justice. There's nothing to bring to these people, right?

It's just one tribe against the other. It's might for right, baby. Who says that what he's doing isn't right? I mean, if you take the atheistic perspective, what's the ultimate goal of atheism?

It's just get your genes into the next generation and it's survival, baby. Maybe. I mean, even that's an arbitrary standard.

Why don't we just kerosene the whole ant hill and burn the whole thing down? Maybe that's right. I don't know. There are brain chemicals that need to eat you.

And which decision is right? I mean, how do you know you're making a decision? Are you just a result of the physical processes happening that are affecting the biochemical responses?

Who knows? I mean, that's atheism, materialism. I mean, really, what's right, what's wrong? But in a situation like this,

I don't know who's to argue with the cannibal in an atheistic framework. He's just trying to get his eat on.

What's the scientific test for that? What's the pH level on that brain fizz? I know, seriously.

Is that really acidic? Like when you're eating another human being, that's a very, very acidic pH on that brain fizz.

This guy was a thinker. I don't know. What do you say? No, but seriously, in a situation like this, you're talking about cannibalism.

Who's to argue with this tribe that his way is wrong?

According to Dawkins, there is no good and evil. There's just what is. There's no ultimate standard above anybody.

So you can't charge this guy with any kind of sin or crime or evil. You can't say he's destitute of any moral character.

He's just trying to survive. And you know what? Isn't it a good thing to survive? Well, yeah, but you're killing other human beings.

Who cares? You act like they matter. Like there's some kind of meaning or purpose or goodness or value by another human being.

His tribe is the most important thing to him. His kids got to eat. And maybe eating you makes his tribe be able to survive and propagate their tribe.

I mean, that's might for right, baby. I mean, it's raw power. It's raw power.

Okay, so that's enough talking now. Hopefully we won't get shut down. Here we go. Thank you. Why are people on that side of the river so afraid of the

Aghori? I see.

Look at that face. That face of absolutely being stunned at the situation he's in.

It looks like he's in the middle of a desert here with people who will cut his head off and they will eat him.

They're legit cannibals. This is what they do. And the look on his face when the guy says,

I'll cut your head off. It's priceless because in the end, this guy,

CNN, he's the recipient of the benefits of the Christian worldview in terms of technology, science, morality, all that stuff.

And now he's come face to face with a cannibalistic tribe. Dude, those guys, sorry. I was just going to ask if that tribe also smokes a lot of cigarettes.

Oh yeah, because the rest of them are like, Yeah, it was intense, man. You sound like Popeye. Definitely scary. Definitely scary sounding.

Okay, here we go. I feel like this may have been a mistake.

Maybe we just, like somebody distracts him and then I just leave. Let's just see where it goes.

But I can be polite. I can be very polite about it. He's like, I like the way he says it.

I mean, I do. I feel really bad for the guy because he's coming face to face with evil. Right? I mean, from our perspective, it's totally evil.

But he's like, Guys, guys. I love how the director is just like,

No, this is good stuff. We're going to get more. He's like, let's just see where this goes. He's like, no, no. I want to go home. Let's just distract him. Oh man.

So, okay. So I wanted to do that to lay down the foundation as you start talking about combat and those sorts of things that only from a

Christian perspective can you even have a meaningful discussion on the point of war, combat, just war theory, human beings as valuable at all, that we ought to be concerned in a just war theory with protecting innocent bystanders, non -combatants, those sorts of things.

So I just want to lay it down. And I thought, of course, it was interesting to show, cannibalism is not over with.

I mean, in Christian societies, it's done away with. Christianity, wherever it goes in the world, when a gospel spreads, ultimately slavery is dissolved and destroyed.

Cannibalism is destroyed. You have a sexual ethic that's particular and it's objective.

And the further you get away from a Christian worldview, the more you delve into perversion, sexual perversions, cannibalism, all the rest.

Anything else? No. I'm ready for the next clue. All right. So here we go, everybody. Let's just do a quick discussion about combat science.

So I'd like to just... I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on this. I've done radio programs on this. You can go listen to Iron Sharpen's Iron Sharpen's Iron radio broadcast

I did on the issue of martial arts and should Christians participate in martial arts. It was like a two -hour discussion there.

I've done it somewhere else as well. We have it in our... If you go to apologiestudios .com to type it in. We did put it on ours.

I think there's two episodes we've done. Okay. So we have talked about this before. I'll just give you the brief on this. First and foremost, the question is, should

Christians participate in combat science, martial arts, those sorts of things? I read at the beginning of the broadcast today,

I read Psalm 144 .1. Blessed be the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.

I think if we were singing the Psalms and really praying through the Psalms often, we wouldn't really be asking the question, should

Christians be engaging in combat sports? Because this actually is a praise to God.

It's a worship song to God. It's blessed be the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.

That's a Psalm of David, and that's legit, like warfare, combat.

In a fallen world, there is a context where we praise God for training our hands for war, our fingers for battle, to have victory over the enemy, over the evil.

It's a fallen world. This is not a world where there is no sin. There is good, and there is evil.

There are perpetrators, and there are victims in a fallen world, and it is a God -glorifying thing to actually learn, from my perspective, combat arts to protect the innocent, to preserve human life.

So, I actually would argue the other direction, that if we were to argue for a form of pacifism that doesn't teach men to defend the helpless and to defend themselves,

I would argue that's an immoral thing. Give me an example, and this is what I mean by that. Let's say, for example, we held to a form of Christian pacifism, and there are different forms, of course, and everybody would probably want their day in court, but if you were to tell somebody, say a

Christian man, say he's a father, he's got six kids, he's got a wife and six kids, he's the sole provider of his family.

You teach this man a form of Christian pacifism so he learns not how to defend himself, he doesn't learn how to defend his family, and you tell him, like, you shouldn't own a gun, you can't defend yourself if you're personally attacked.

I would say that you're actually teaching something that's very immoral, because he has an obligation before God to protect and provide for his family, which means wisdom would dictate that he plans ahead for the protection and provision of his family, and if we sell him a version of Christian pacifism that tells him, don't bother training, don't bother thinking about the future, and don't bother actually working to protect your family, even to the point of deadly force if necessary, then when he's attacked one day and you've sold him this version of Christian pacifism and he hasn't been able to defend himself and he's done nothing to defend himself or his family, when he's killed by a perpetrator, who's victimized?

His wife and his kids. Is he there to take care of his wife now? Is he there to care for his children?

No, he's missing now. Why? Well, because we sold him a bill of goods about Christian pacifism that it's actually a good thing that he suffers and goes like a lamb led to the slaughter,

I suppose, but all the while, we've got empty mouths and empty bellies, and we've got children now without a father.

Why? Because we sold a version of Christian pacifism that ideally would be great.

Wouldn't it be great if there were no wars and there was no fighting, but we don't live in that world yet.

It's not fully fixed yet and redeemed yet, and so we live in a world where there is evil and sin, perpetrators and victims, and I would actually say it's a moral responsibility before God for men to learn to protect the innocent, and that does involve, at times, learning to actually engage in warfare and combat science.

You can have different versions. I mean, you have Gracie Jiu -Jitsu, primarily focused on ground fighting and submission, locks, arm bars, those sorts of things.

You've got things like traditional combat systems of karate and taekwondo. Those are combat systems, and they're learning how to actually use the science of fighting.

It is, in fact, a science, and I think it's important and I think it's a moral responsibility for fathers and husbands to be prepared to even use deadly force.

Yeah, well, we can use the same passage we use for our abortion ministry in Proverbs 24, to rescue those being led to the slaughter.

That's a command. That's not a, hey, suggestion, maybe, or even the opposite, like you were saying in pacifism, like don't do that.

It's saying, if someone's being led to the slaughter and you have an opportunity to rescue them, it's your moral obligation to do so.

Right, exactly. And the passage goes on to continue to say that God will hold you accountable for that. That's right. That's right, and so I think there's elements that we need to think about in terms of wisdom about that discussion about preserving human life, and that would require, also, being able to learn how to do this effectively and efficiently, and so I think it's important because I'm grateful to God that as generations go on and on and on, we get better and more precise at protecting against collateral damage.

So, for example, warfare in this century has, because of the influence of Christian ideology and worldview, has gotten to the place where you have countries like ours that have been influenced by the

Christian worldview where we say, no, you have to protect against collateral damage. You can't go after innocents.

Now, there are people that still do that stuff, but there's also nations like ours that have been influenced by Christianity to the degree they say you can't just go killing innocent people, and we actually put people up for war crimes to say even in war, even in war, you can commit crimes.

You are not allowed to kerosene the whole anthill and burn everything down. There are victims that you need to be able to protect, even on the enemy's side.

And that's the influence of the Christian worldview. And here's the deal. Watch, as time's gone by in martial arts, every generation gets better.

It's amazing. It really is. Like, I'll give you an example. If you watch the old videos, you can watch them on YouTube. I mean, it's interesting to watch.

Like, you see like Chuck Norris and Bill Wallace and Joe Louis. These are like the old 70s famous martial arts fighters.

Remember the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? Remember when Brad Pitt fights Bruce Lee?

And Bruce Lee's talking about, and he goes, Muhammad Ali, and he goes, and Joe Louis. He goes, not the boxer that, he's like that American kickboxer.

He was like a famous American kickboxer when Chuck Norris was in fighting and everything. Here's the deal. Watch the old videos of Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris is an American icon. You know, he's a professing believer. He's an amazing martial artist.

But I think he would even agree, if you watch martial arts in the 70s, those guys were at the peak of their game.

They were like the legends of the time. And you compare them to martial artists today, who are at the peak of their game and they're legends of our time.

There's no comparison because we get better and better and better and better. People get faster.

We shave off the rough edges and make things more efficient. Martial science is about that.

It makes things better. And here's the deal. You have systems of martial arts that are just focused upon the combat aspect.

So for example, Gracie Jiu -Jitsu, combat aspects. Combat karate systems, same thing.

Combat, that's what they're focused on. A combat taekwondo system, not like the sports systems.

Those are just more for games and sports. Combat taekwondo systems like military, fighting. You have systems of like Wing Chun focused on combat.

Hung Fai Yi Wing Chun, it was specifically, I mean, those guys sat there and it was all just combat. How do

I kill somebody as efficiently as possible on the battlefield? So you have systems that are focused on the combat aspect, but you do admittedly have systems that are pagan.

They are occultic, straight up. You can't separate the system of combat from the worldview elements of the occultism.

Like, for example, I'm sorry to say it, if you guys practice it, I just got to say it because it's true. Tai Chi.

Tai Chi, you cannot divorce from the movements themselves. Let's say it's a fighting arts.

Well, I don't think it's a very effective fighting art at all, but you can't separate the worldview from the movements because the movements come from an understanding of Chi, right?

Oneness with the universe, harnessing energy coming through all the points necessary to send that Chi power out, all those things.

So there are arts where you can say as a Christian, Christians ought not to engage in such a system because it is pagan, occultic, and you can't separate the system from the worldview and the ideology.

But there are martial arts systems and there are many of them that were combat systems.

Now, the worldview of the original practitioners is irrelevant because what they were trying to figure out is how do

I break the guy's leg? How do I put him in an arm bar so he can't get out? How do I make him fall asleep?

How do I flip him over my back? And that really had to do with mechanics, not with worldview.

And so the worldview is irrelevant, ultimately. And so a lot of people, I think, had a problem when we put that up.

They're like, how can you be a Christian and trained to hurt people? I would say, let's have a good cry and let's admit we live in a fallen world and let's get to the real business of actually trying to say what ethically is our responsibility when we talk about just war or self -defense.

Yeah, I think this is kind of to combine the two conversations with just war and you kind of mentioned even like improve science and stuff when it comes to war.

I don't know if you... I think I showed you this like six months ago or so. I saw like there's a new missile thing that the

US is using with drones and stuff. And it's basically just like razor blades and they can drop it from a drone like a direct, you know, they can tell it where to go.

And it's basically just like when it gets close, it opens up and it's a bunch of razor blades. And so it destroys who it's supposed to hit, but there's no collateral damage.

It's insane. Like I've seen... That's amazing. I saw pictures like where it hit and it was like a car and it hit directly on that guy but then outside that there was no collateral damage.

So there's no bombs, there's no blowing up. That's amazing. Yeah, so that's the kind of thing you're talking about though where it's like preserving as much life as you possibly can even in a moment where there's someone that's an evil, evil person that needs to be stopped.

Like you can stop them and not kill anybody else. Yeah, right. So that's amazing. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, I was very excited.

And I actually saw some new thing. I think the Air Force created it. And it was like something that...

I'm probably totally going to blow this, but I think I'll get most of the components right. Basically, it's like a giant pole that is launched from space and dropped to the earth.

But basically, when it hits the ground, there's not an explosion from any kind of material within this.

It's not like a missile that has a charge and explodes. It's basically like a ginormous pole that it hits the earth so hard that the power from it actually impacting sends such a shock out.

But there's no explosion that you would normally create with a missile or something like that.

But the devastation it can cause is enormous. That's amazing. And I guess it's just launched from space and just dropped.

Amazing. Okay, so thinking about the issue of drones, we're probably going to have to do two shows on this, to be honest, to really make sense of it.

So we'll end with a clip from Dr. Greg Bonson on a radio program laying down the foundations of a just war theory.

But I think it would benefit us to think about... Let's think about two things just briefly here.

Number one, I gave to you Psalm 144. I'm not giving to you all the verses that you can muster for this position.

But I think that's something that has to be contended with. That's the word of God. And there's a blessing and praise to God for doing what?

Training my hands for war, my fingers for battle. Okay? And that's significant.

God is unchanging. His nature is unchanging. God's justice is unchanging. And we think about the

God that we worship is still a good thing today in this fallen world in certain categories that we say, praise you

God, you made me to where I can actually preserve innocent life and protect justice by destroying the evil one, the perpetrator.

That's a big praise to God. It's a good thing. It's a good thing when countries wage a righteous war.

A righteous war. Now, listen. Okay, let me try to encourage you guys here with this.

When I just said it's a good thing for a country to engage in a righteous war, there's a context to that.

Just to give this to you, I think we should pull every one of our troops home around the world right now when we engage them wherever they're at in an unjust way.

In other words, we're spending our own money. It's coming from you and I, us.

And we're spending blood and physical lives and separating families by having people all over the world right now in places that we really ought not to be.

I would say bring them home. I would say, look at the last generation of American wars.

I can point to a handful, and there are many, where I could say that was an unjust war and no, it wasn't righteous.

It was not righteous at all. And I would say it's offensive to God to engage in that kind of warfare.

So when I say it's a good thing to engage in righteous warfare, I'm acknowledging that we ought to pull basically everybody home.

Now there are some distinctions I would make there, but I hope that sort of helps to answer that. We're not just warmongers saying war, war, war.

I'm saying, listen, we don't have a right to declare war on anybody, but the state,

God's institution does. The one who wields the sword of justice and protects and preserves the righteous, organizes for national defense, they have a right to.

And of course, this is another discussion, but the war for independence in America when King George broke contract and all that took place there,

I think it was right for us to be defensive as we were and then to actually respond with self -defense.

I think that was a war that was waged self -defensively. And so I think that was a righteous cause and a righteous war.

And we won't get into the full details of that discussion on this show today, but lead you to one more issue in terms of a principle,

God's law, His principles. It is in Exodus 22. Go read that. And this goes down to the personal level.

So we've got warfare and we've got the personal level. God gives a case law example where if somebody breaks into your house, they break into your home and you end up killing the person, right?

The person trying to harm you or destroy you and you end up killing the person. There's obviously self -defense there.

God says, there is no crime. That's just. Self -defense, according to God, when your life is in danger like that is righteous.

It is good. Self -defense is a good thing. And so you have case law examples where God actually says, and this is okay.

Somebody breaks in. It's a fallen world. They're trying to harm you. You kill them. They're dead. Not your fault.

You are not at fault. There is nothing. There's nothing to bear from you on that. That's personal.

Now, this would be great actually. Two weeks on this would be good, I think. So we're going to play more clips from this later, but this is from a radio interview

Dr. Greg Bonson did on the issue of just war theory. This is where Dr. Bonson just lays down the principles.

It's not very long, but I want you to hear it. It'll lead us into next week. If I were to ask you the question just this way, in fact,

I'm going to. Well, was the most recent war in the Middle East justified? Was Operation Just Cause indeed a just cause?

Well, obviously, when you ask the question looking for a yes or no answer, and there has to be a yes or no answer because I don't think we live in a world of relativism, but it's going to be subject to misunderstanding if there isn't something by way of a lead -in explanation of what a just war is and how that would be applied.

Is there such a thing? I believe there is such a thing as a just war. From the standpoint of biblical revelation, though we know war stems from the sinful desires of men, and therefore war is always a spiritual failure for us as human beings, nevertheless, in a fallen world where we have to deal with that sinful nature of man, there are going to be occasions where war is the appropriate response to aggression.

So you're not a pacifist? Not at all. I think that though the ideals of the pacifist are correct ideals and the things that we as Christians should be striving for, we will not accomplish that by simply laying down our arms and pretending the world isn't a fallen place with aggressive individuals that will violently take advantage of the innocent.

Saddam Hussein took advantage, I don't know about the innocent, but he took advantage certainly of the

Kuwaitis. He's a Hitler -esque figure capable of all kinds of atrocities. Certainly you must agree that bringing a tyrannical, lawless individual like him to bay is a noble cause, right?

Well, he's been described as the butcher of Baghdad, and though there's obviously rhetorical force to that,

I think there's moral force to it as well. He is a man that deserves to be driven from power and to be brought to justice for his crimes against his own people and other peoples of the world as well.

There's no question about him being an evil man, and there's no question about it being good that he be brought down.

The real question is, what is the just and morally appropriate way for that to take place?

All right, I'll bite. What is the just and moral way to bring his regime to an end?

Okay, well, the question, because we asked whether this was a just war, meaning was it just for us as the

United States to intervene, the real question is going to become, has God granted to us, the

United States of America, the right to police the world? As wrong as Saddam Hussein is, and as ideal as it would be for him to be driven from power, the real question is whether we have been authorized by God to expend the lives and money, property of our citizens in order to accomplish that noble end.

And I don't believe that the Bible warrants that kind of thinking for not only the United States, but for any other nation of the world.

The problems of the Middle East have got to be taken care of in the Middle East. Our intervention, I'm afraid, betrays something of a messianic complex way of thinking for us as Americans that we've got the right answers, and therefore we have the right to go anywhere in the world and to impose those answers.

Now that isn't to say that I disagree with the goal of having this man driven from power, but I certainly disagree with the idea that our children and our money should be used to do that.

Well, there's a start everybody. So we will continue this discussion on Just War Theory next week right here on Apologia Radio, Lord willing of course, but that's the plan.

And I encourage you guys all to go to ApologiaStudios .com.

Go there. Check out all the past episodes. Go check out the shows that are productions of Apologia Studios.

Go watch Sheologians. Go check out Cultish. Go check out Provoked, all those shows.

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That's Luke the Bear. Peace out. I'm Jeff the Coleman Ninja. We'll catch you next week right here on Apologia Radio.