Debate Teacher Reacts: Frank Turek vs Michael Shermer

Are you a fan of apologetics debates, but by the end of it you're scratching your head wondering, yeah, but who really won?

Maybe the two opponents were so rhetorically persuasive, but you really want to know who won based on the merits of the

debate itself.

My name is Nate Sala, I'm the president of a Christian apologetics ministry called A Clear Lens, and before I jumped into ministry,

I actually taught debate.

So if you're looking for the inside baseball on famous Christian apologetics debates, then join me in this video.

On this episode, we're looking at Frank Turek vs. Michael Shermer.

The debate topic is what best explains reality, theism or atheism?

Now this debate clocks in at a little over two hours, so I'm only going to be looking at cross -examination.

Again, we're going to be looking at the merits of the debate on this one.

Now I'm spending time on cross -examination because I always told my students in the classroom that cross -examination is where a lot of the

magic happens.

You can either shine or you can stink really badly in cross -exam.

So I'm excited to take a look at this.

Let's jump into the video right now.

I'm pumped.

I'm pumped.

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

So at this point, we're going to have a 15 -minute cross -examination where each debater

gets 15 minutes to ask questions to the other debater, and they get to answer it, and then they switch roles after

15 minutes.

And at this point, you can also throw in some rebuttal statements in that.

But however, I do ask that if you do ask a question, you...

Okay.

Okay.

So the moderator...

Note, the moderator said something about rebuttals.

In a regular, I don't know, again, like a policy or a public forum debate, you can't do that.

You can only ask the right kinds of questions that serve your purposes as an interlocutor.

But the person that's answering the questions are not allowed to give a formal

rebuttal.

Rebuttal speeches have its own separate category, and that's after a cross -exam.

Great.

All right.

Thanks.

Michael, a question I'll put on the board so everyone can see.

If you're a brain evolved by an unguided, unintelligent process, and all your thoughts are completely dictated by the laws of

physics, in other words, you're a moist robot, then why should we think your thoughts are true, including the thoughts you've

stated right here tonight?

Ah.

Okay.

We're operating at different levels here, so you're...

It would be like if you wanted to explain water by looking at the quantum physics in the

subatomic particles in hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

How do you get water out of these quantum, these quarks inside the

protons and neutrons of the atom?

You don't.

It's a higher level explanation, much like we talk about emergent properties.

How do you get democracy out of atoms?

Well, you don't.

You don't use physics to explain democracy.

You use political science.

So what we're talking about here is kind of different levels, explanatory levels, which is one reason why we

have different fields of study.

Okay.

Immediately, they're already off on the wrong foot.

A lot of times, people aren't really talking to each other, they're talking around each other.

Turek asked a very specific question that actually goes back to, if you catch the full debate, which by the way, the link will be in the show description,

it goes back to something that he made in his opening statement.

What Frank is asking is a two -pronged question, it seems to me.

The first question is really about epistemology, okay?

If we are, according to atheists, according to Shermer, if we are nothing but molecules,

then we're locked inside our own minds.

We cannot transcend that.

We cannot find anything that is actually transcendent and objective and applies to us in a

way that we conform and adhere to it outside of ourselves.

And so the first question Frank is asking is, how can we access that?

That's an epistemological question.

The second question that he's asking, though, is directly related, which is, if we can't access it as atheists under your

worldview, then is it even there?

Now, Shermer appears to be answering with, well, the interaction of molecules makes

water.

I think he's providing some kind of a corollary to where he's suggesting that basically the interaction of our own

molecules in our brains creates truth?

I'm not sure.

Let me go ahead and let him finish.

I agree with you on that, that there are other fields of study.

But if you're a materialist, unless you've changed your mind, all that exists are molecules.

So again, why should we believe what you're saying?

Well, that's sort of a bizarre question.

What do you mean, why should we believe it?

It would be like saying, you're made out of quarks, and so why should I believe you?

What does quarks or atoms got to do with anything?

Because if we're controlled by the laws of physics, including our thoughts, why should we expect our thoughts to be

true?

Okay.

I'm a compatibilist.

So I believe that we have volition and free will.

How?

Okay.

But free will was not the primary thing that Turek is talking about here.

So now Shermer has kind of shifted, you know, Turek did bring this up, but that was a secondary effect of his original question.

And now Shermer is shifting, whether he's doing it on purpose or not.

I mean, this is kind of filibustering a little bit, but let's see.

Well, okay.

So it has to do with emergent property of complex systems.

So you and I have more degrees of freedom than a dog.

Dog has more degrees of freedom.

By degrees of freedom, I mean places to move, choices to make.

So rats make choices.

I'll press the left bar or the right bar.

I'll go down this alley, that alley, whatever.

Those are choices.

Rats make them, dogs make them, we make them, and we have more choices, more degrees of freedom than

say rats, than say cockroaches.

Okay.

So like, what would be the difference between a drug addict hooked on Oxycontin

and you and I who are not?

You know, you and I don't, are not under that sway, but this, the poor addict is.

There's a difference there of degrees of freedom.

Okay.

So I would say.

Yeah, but he's presupposing freedom.

So yeah, he really hasn't answered the question.

And look, as a compatibilist myself, and a Christian, compatibilists have a difficult time answering this

question because it's a difficult question to answer because the problem of interaction is still something

that compatibilists, in my opinion, really haven't worked out.

And so he really is going to struggle in this particular area.

But again, this really wasn't the primary question that Turek was asking here.

And so, I mean, he's, I don't know what he's doing at this, but he's not helping himself.

I would answer it that way, that it's kind of different levels of how many controlling vectors are

at work.

Do you believe the laws of logic exist?

Well, okay.

Not without humans to describe them.

Okay.

Let me ask you this then.

Yeah.

You're saying the laws of logic are just human constructions.

Correct.

Well, okay.

Two things.

One, there is a reality that really exists.

So we can measure that the angle here, you know, to a bat's brain or, you know, it may look different

than on my brain, but there really is a table and it really exists.

Even if I can't ever know what it's like to be a bat and know what it feels like to experience a table through

echolocation rather than touch or sight, but still that really exists.

So the laws of nature that we describe and interpret with mathematics and words,

those are human constructions.

There's no like second law of thermodynamics or a Newtonian equation in

a star.

Yeah, but -.

The star is just doing what stars do.

When they get a certain pressure and temperature, they convert hydrogen into helium.

Come on, Frank.

Let me just ask you this.

You're saying they're human constructions then.

So let me ask you this.

Before there were any human beings on the earth, was the statement there are no human beings on the earth true?

Okay.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, then how could the laws of logic just be human constructions then?

Well, but we're asking that today.

Regardless of what we're asking.

If there's no humans, there's no one asking the question.

But it was still true prior to that.

How could you and I even communicate if you had your own idea of the laws of logic and I had my own idea?

How could we even communicate unless we're -.

So this is where Shermer is getting himself into a lot of trouble, okay?

On the one hand, he was taking issue with Turek's original question.

Again, Turek's original question was two pronged.

On the one hand, if we're locked inside ourselves in a subjective sense, because all we are just molecules in motion,

then how can we

So this is an epistemological question.

How can we access truth?

And how can we even say there is such a thing as something that is objective that we

must adhere to and conform to?

Originally, it seemed like Shermer was talking about molecules combining together to create water and all that.

So the corollary then must be that truth is something that is a process or a combination

of the molecular interaction in our brains.

But now he just said that there is an external reality.

So in the realm of external reality, what is his explanation for these things?

He still has not answered the question.

So maybe he will, who knows?

Because there is a reality and we share a common neuroanatomy to

describe it in ways that are similar.

So this gets at the problem of other minds.

How do I know your red looks like my red?

These head scratchers that you get in Philosophy 101.

How do I know that you're not all a bunch of zombies and I'm the only one with the lights on?

My answer to this is the Copernican principle, which says we're not special.

The earth is not the center of the universe.

We go around the sun with all the other planets.

We're not special.

We're just in a little corner of the Milky Way galaxy, one of a hundred billion galaxies.

We're not special.

So the chances of me being the super special one human that's conscious and self -aware

and the rest of you are zombies walking around and you only look like you're, and pretending to be conscious

is very low.

So that's how.

Right.

Okay.

Shermer is not helping himself at all here and Turek clearly has the upper hand just in this first

few minutes.

Shermer started to say something interesting, which is, hey, maybe we have a shared neuroanatomy.

I'm not sure what he's getting at there.

Maybe he means that the way that the body, evolutionarily speaking, is designed

makes us to have the same kinds of shared thought processes that then when we communicate

one to another, we can actually understand each other.

But he didn't really go there and then he started talking about the Copernican principle.

So again, like right now, Shermer is losing this particular aspect of cross -exam.

I'd be giving points to Turek and, but hopefully he pulls it out.

You know, who knows?

Shermer might save himself here.

You're still not answering how these laws exist because they exist.

Even if human beings don't exist, the laws exist in the mind of God.

Otherwise you and I couldn't even communicate.

Okay.

Okay.

So first of all, they exist in the mind of God.

That doesn't follow from this at all.

That's a separate assertion.

We can come back to that.

When we talk about a law...

What you just said there is an assertion and you're using the laws of logic to say it.

If the laws of logic aren't objective, that statement couldn't be true.

First of all, okay, so first of all, it's not true that there has to be a God or else that...

Why would God make the laws any special?

What's God got to do with the laws of nature?

Nothing.

You're just saying that.

Well, that's the very point.

I'm not talking about laws of nature.

I'm talking about the laws of logic, but if you want to talk about the laws of nature...

Those are just words.

We're using conventions, mathematical equations.

Those are all human constructions.

Michael, I know you're not a postmodernist.

Please.

They're just words.

No, no, no.

They're describing truths.

Yeah, but...

Okay.

Yeah, but...

Okay.

The equation...

Again, back to...

I'm skeptical you're a postmodernist.

Say Newtonian equations, they don't exist in the sun.

The sun's just doing what the sun...

It's just physical matter doing what it has to do.

We describe it.

So before there were humans, no, there was no law of...

So the sun was not burning before there were humans?

There was no law of...

No, the sun, of course, is burning, doing its thing, but there's no Newtonian equation to describe it.

Well, there's no Newtonian equation to describe it in our minds because we're not here yet, but that Newtonian equation is

still describing the truth of what was happening.

No, no, no.

Not the equation.

Well, the equation describes what happens.

The equation doesn't do the work.

The equation is our way of describing how it works.

Correct.

So what is...

What is your explanation for why what we're describing

exists?

What is the explanation?

We're waiting.

Okay, but that existed prior to you and me ever existing.

The sun was burning before you and I ever existed.

Okay, I think we're...

Let me run to another question.

Well, we're talking about two different things here.

We're talking about the material reality of stuff that exists and then our description of it.

Right.

Well, you're going...

Yeah, and you're not answering either.

So what are we supposed to do here except give points to Turek at this point?

With emergent properties, which appears to be a faith position.

Anyway, let me ask you this.

If God does not exist, only molecules exist, what is the nature of the moral standard called goodness and why are

we obligated to obey it?

What is that little ruler if it's not God's nature?

Okay, back to where I started.

Frank, can you think of any reason why...

Okay, see, Shermer doesn't understand the question.

And probably what he's going to do here is he's going to say, yeah, but I know right and wrong and I don't need the Bible to tell me so.

Which is, you know, the Hitchens thing, the Sam Harris, you know, thing.

Maybe Dawkins does that too.

The problem with this is they're not talking to each other, they're talking around each other and Shermer doesn't understand Turek.

Now, not a knock against Turek because Turek is very smart.

I would have, if I were in Turek's position, I would be finding another way to word this particular

question in a manner that actually helps Shermer out to understand specifically what it is that we're

asking.

Now Turek has shifted to the morality question, the moral argument, which again goes back to his opening statement.

But the problem is that Shermer still doesn't get it.

So now we're going to get probably another three or four minutes of something that doesn't really answer the question and

we're not going to get anywhere.

Frank, can you think of any reason why sexually molesting a child is bad?

I can think of, yes, I can think of reasons, but they're all based on moral principles which require God.

No, they don't.

Sure they do.

No, really.

Do you really need God to tell you and explain to you why it's wrong to molest a child?

No, not to tell me why it's wrong, but you don't need God to know right and wrong.

You don't need God to be good.

You just need God to justify what good is.

No, you don't.

Right there, stop right there and leave out the God part.

I know why it's wrong.

Full stop.

You know why it's wrong, but why is it wrong independent of you knowing it?

So Plato refuted this two and a half millennia ago.

Really?

It's called the euthyphro problem or the euthyphro dilemma.

That is, if God says, say, murder is wrong, although technically by

definition that's what murder means, wrongful killing.

But in any case, are there reasons why God is saying that?

Yes, God has his reasons.

Okay, give us the reasons.

Made in the image of God.

And skip the middleman.

All we need are the reasons why.

But see, that implies a moral principle.

Before you said the reason you shouldn't sexually molest a child is because they're sentient beings and you wouldn't want them doing it to you

or vice versa or whatever.

Those are all other moral principles that need a source.

But they don't need a source.

What is the source on atheism?

What is the standard?

No, leave atheism out of it.

Atheism isn't anything.

It's just lack of belief in God, full stop.

We could talk about civil rights, civil liberties, the rule of law.

Where do rights come from?

Conventions.

We, okay, I think rights come from, the basis of it is human nature and

what all of us want.

Now, I think we're born with an inherent, innate sense of right and wrong.

Okay, so morality just means it's there.

It's just there.

And we all somehow share it because it's just there.

Research like in Paul Bloom's lab at Yale, for example, with tiny infants.

These are like six months to a year old babies.

And they are shown a little puppet show.

So imagine there's this ramp and this puppet's pushing this ball up the ramp and one puppet comes up and

bashes the ball back down and is fighting the little puppet.

And then, let me finish.

This is a great experiment.

I'm not disagreeing that we all know right from wrong.

That's not my point.

My point is not epistemology.

How do you know right from wrong?

My point is, what is rightness on an atheistic, materialistic worldview?

On a humanist worldview.

Thanks for clarifying, Frank, because before it wasn't really certain in your particular question.

So it might help Shermer out if you did not assume that Shermer fully understands what it is that you're asking.

And kind of, you know, I mean, I hate to make this phrase, but kind of dumb it down, you know, especially for the audience.

Right and wrong is determined by a combination of our innate moral sense,

our upbringing,.

What our parents teach us, our family.

So when Shermer says it's our innate moral sense, he means it's just already there.

It just is.

Our social communities and so on, which, by the way, have changed a lot.

You guys would have been in favor of burning witches and enslaving blacks centuries ago.

You don't believe that anymore.

Maybe 50 years ago, most of you would have voted, probably about 90 would have voted that

blacks and whites getting married should be illegal.

It's not God's plan.

God separated the races by continents.

These were arguments made in the 20th century.

Nobody here would argue that today.

Michael, your book, Gay Marriage, most of you are probably against this.

I contend probably half of you tonight are already in favor of it or at least let it happen.

In 10 years, we won't even be talking about gay marriage.

Right and wrong shifts over time, and it doesn't come from religion, it doesn't

come from the Bible.

There's no reinterpretation of when Paul said this, he really meant gays should get married.

No, that's not how moral change happens.

It's not happening through religion.

I'm not talking about moral change.

I'm talking about the grounding of morality.

If we're just molecules, well, then if we do it, then who's to say Hitler was worse than Mother Teresa?

Who's to say that if there's no standard beyond either?

Okay, just a little side note.

And this is again, this is like a little inside baseball.

No judge wants to hear about Hitler.

So bringing up Hitler in a debate, you know, there are just so much more

better, more nuanced examples to go to.

Hitler is so easy.

Judges are just so tired of that.

They really don't want to hear that.

Neither of them.

How can you say Hitler was wrong?

Can you think of any reason why Hitler was worse than Mother Teresa?

If you say because he killed people, then you just brought another moral principle in.

It's wrong to kill people.

Why is it wrong to kill people?

How about the survival and flourishing of sentient beings is a good, and the more we promote that and do it, that's good.

Harming and killing people is bad.

Michael, Hitler says no.

Hitler wants to flourish his sentient beings, not you.

Why is he wrong?

So he was wrong because it's violating the sense that every autonomous person has

of a desire to live and fulfill their destiny as sentient beings.

Why is that a moral principle we ought to obey?

We're born with it.

We're born knowing it, but why should we obey it?

We get it from, like, for example, our constitutions that we write, and we say, this is what we're going to do.

Social contract theory.

So if we write a constitution that says gay marriage is bad, you're for that?

No, no, no.

Oh, okay.

So there's a standard outside the constitution you want to impose on it.

Based on our nature, yes.

It comes inherent with the species.

But it wasn't in our nature, Dr. Shermer, before to affirm homosexual

marriage or gay marriage.

Imagine you're walking in the forest and you see a fridge, and you walk over, you're like, wow, this is out of

place.

You open up the fridge and it's stocked full of fresh food, your favorite foods, whatever those are, right?

If Frank Turek and Michael Shermer were walking in the forest and found this fridge, sort of in keeping to the analogy here,

Frank Turek would walk up and say, well, where did all this food come from?

And Shermer would say, well, I don't have any trouble seeing that there's food in the fridge.

You see how there's like, they're not having the same conversation, they're talking around each other.

And that's why this is so frustrating.

We're born with a sense of a desire for life, freedom and autonomy, which is why women

have been fighting against the church for 2000 years to have reproductive rights, freedom

from oppression, from males and so forth.

And we have all been bending to this because women say, that's what we want.

It's something we want because we're born with it.

Unless the woman is in the womb.

Okay, now, let's talk about that for a second.

Oh, wow.

Let me go to a new subject.

No, no, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait.

No, no, you brought it up.

It's my time, Michael.

You brought it up.

I should, I, and here, maybe.

Would it be immoral for me to stop you?

It might be a good time to use Bill Maher's line that Republicans are pro -choice all

the way up to the time where their mistress gets pregnant.

And also, conservatives seem to be pro -life all the way up until birth.

And then after that, just war, it's perfectly okay to kill innocent civilians in Iraq.

It's perfectly okay to put to death people on death row.

So, you've already argued that it's justifiable to kill certain people, even innocent

people, due to some other cause.

All right?

So, you, we're already on the same page there.

No, no, no, no, no, no, Michael.

What you just brought up, there's a difference between an innocent child in the womb and a guilty murderer on death row.

What about an innocent civilian in Iraq that we?

Okay, the cross -exam is starting to devolve.

And what, it's shifting away from its original point, and Turek is letting it happen.

And I think at this point, I would be maybe withholding some points for Turek,

because the bottom line is, Turek needs to press Shermer, number one, on the issues that he was asking about,

which actually go back to his opening statement, which is what you're supposed to do.

But then when Shermer starts to shift and talk about things, and even Turek brings up things that are ancillary to

the original points that he was trying to make by asking questions in cross -exam.

And it seems like Turek did that, I don't know, for some kind of emotional reaction from the crowd or

something like that.

But the bottom line is that Turek now is actually doing a disservice to his own arguments.

And now the conversation has shifted a bit to abortion,

when originally it was about the grounding of morality.

So we got to be extremely careful as debaters to, number one, stick to the points that

we want to make by asking those questions, and then not letting your interlocutor change the conversation and lead you

into a new discussion that wasn't part of your original one.

That's why we try and minimize those, because we know that person's valuable.

Let me go on to final question, only got three minutes left.

Good.

Good for you.

We don't have to put a stopwatch on it.

I want you to put me on the spot.

What blind natural laws can create computer code billions of letters long?

Okay, first of all, you were wrong about that business.

About DNA is perfect, there's not a single...

Well, no, there could be mutations in it, but...

This is not just mutations, 8 % of our DNA is viral DNA.

This is called lateral gene transfer.

It was discovered in the 60s and 70s.

There's a new book out called The Tangled Tree, David Quammen, I just had him on my podcast last week.

He talks about all the new research on this, since the Human Genome Project, 8 % of our genome is viral.

How did it get there?

It came there from viruses.

Two and a half percent of our genome of everybody who's not in Africa, does not have an African origin is Neanderthal.

Give me the explanation, the theist...

So for Shermer now, Shermer actually has a solid reply.

Now whether you are taken with Shermer's position or not, that's a solid response to

Turek.

And I take Shermer's word at having the expert on, and I have to go back after this recording and double check his

sources.

But just for the purposes of cross -exam, that's a pretty solid response.

Now does it actually handle the 92 % of the genetic code?

No.

But at least Shermer has something here, so maybe he can flesh this out a little bit

further in cross -exam.

...explanation for why God put Neanderthal DNA, two and a half percent, into our genome.

What's the purpose of that?

I don't know what the purpose is because I'm not a biologist, but my question to you is, is the DNA a computer

program or not?

These analogies we use, it's not a computer program.

This is just a metaphor we use to try to understand.

Shermer's also correct.

It's not a computer program.

And Turek is being a little inarticulate here in sort of speaking as if it was,

instead of it's like a computer program.

It's not a metaphor.

It's one -to -one correspondence.

It's like computer code.

It's like computer...

You can ask the moderator right here.

That's what he should have said originally.

It's like computer code.

It is not computer code.

As soon as you get yourself into trouble that way, your interlocutor can have a field day pointing out that you've misspoken.

All right, it looks like it's Shermer's turn, so let's go ahead and see Shermer shine.

I mean, this is an opportunity, so hopefully he can push back on Frank here.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Everybody know how to use an iPhone?

Come on, Shermer.

What.

I'm not following you, Frank, so for example, from your beginning points, how you're deriving that there

must be a single, personal creator who cares about me from

the fact that the gravitational laws are a certain way.

I haven't gotten there completely yet because this is just theism at this point.

Could it be a committee of gods?

It could be two or three or a dozen.

It could be like a board of directors that run the universe.

No, it can't.

Okay, I don't...

Okay.

Shermer started out well.

The question is, why is it only that a personal

being is the answer to the question, why is the universe here?

Why does everything exist?

Maybe there's other alternatives.

Now, science has some alternatives.

Whether or not you think they're great, they do, but then Shermer takes back.

He undercuts himself by saying, could it be another god or other gods?

The whole point of the debate is what best explains reality, theism or atheism, so he starts off well,

and then he hurts himself, and that's not great.

For a couple of reasons, although you look at the platypus, you might think so.

Well, but I mean, deism, that could be it.

God set up the whole thing.

You're right, you're right.

Deism.

And runs the show.

It could be deism, but I think when you go further, you realize that God has intervened in the world since the beginning.

But back to your point, one argument which I didn't bring up is the idea that

everything that exists materially is composed, and it needs to be composed

by an external force.

Now, the force that composes the universe and composes matter can't be composed itself, because then that

being would need a composer as well.

So what you're getting back to is an immaterial, spaceless, timeless composer that

is pure actuality, no potentiality.

That being isn't composed at all.

It's spaceless, timeless, and immaterial, and there can only be one of them.

If you're timeless, do you have a beginning?

Yeah, of course.

Let me say that again.

If you're timeless, do you have a beginning?

You can.

How?

You're not in time.

Okay, look, at the end of the day, you're going to respond based on your research, based on your prep

time, your practice, all that stuff.

Role -playing for this debate, I'm sure, I'm assuming, both Frank and Shermer role -played these things

before they got up on stage here.

And so in the moment, you're going to say stuff, I don't think this was probably the best response.

What Shermer is asking about is intentionality, okay?

And that's where Shermer, I think, doesn't quite, he either disagrees with Frank or he doesn't quite understand what Frank

is getting at here.

Why is it that a being has to be the answer?

Now, Frank talks about things being composed, which is fine.

But what he really needs to explain is when you have a universe that

exists now, but once in the past did not exist, which is Big Bang cosmology, right?

What explains the universe coming into existence in the first place?

Now, inanimate objects have no way of creating or causing.

The only thing that causes is something that is intentional.

And the only things that are intentional is a mind.

Now, Frank probably should have walked through that, but he doesn't.

And so Shermer, I think, isn't really going to understand and probably continue to give pushback on Frank's

responses here to his question.

Depending on the laws of logic that are failing, because first of all, we don't know of anything that came from nothing.

There's no example of this at all.

For example, quantum physicists tell us that the things that are bouncing off all of this right now,

photons of light, they come from the inside of atoms.

They're not in the atoms.

They're not sitting there waiting to burst out.

They pop out of the atoms, out of nothing, out of the quantum foam.

You quoted Stephen Hawking quite a bit.

Hawking's point was that not that the universe comes from nothing, that there's not this like creation event

from nothing.

When physicists talk about nothing, they don't mean what theologians mean.

They mean there's this quantum energy field out of which things pop

from just the pure energy.

We know of no...

It would help if he could actually quote Hawking in some form or fashion saying this to further his point.

Nothing.

Okay.

This is one of these linguistic epistemological walls I mentioned that we're going to hit.

We can't conceive of nothing.

Which by the way, this is cross -examination.

Where are the questions?

Why isn't he asking Frank questions?

Why is he sitting here expounding on...

He's defending himself in cross -examination.

Amazing.

This is a wasted opportunity and the clock is against him and he's going to find his time run short before he can actually ask some really great

questions.

It's not possible for any human brain to conceive of nothing.

Sure it is.

That's what most men think about.

No thing.

No thing.

See the word itself, no thing, implies there's a thing of which there's no.

That would not even be nothing.

It would be like my asking you, imagine yourself dead.

You can't do it because to imagine something you have to be alive.

Michael, don't go Lawrence Krauss on me.

I mean, come on.

Even atheists' hand is a book.

No, no.

This is Lawrence Krauss.

If I say I had nothing for lunch, that means I had no thing for lunch.

I didn't eat lunch.

It doesn't mean I had something called nothing.

Okay.

Again, we don't know anything about what the universe was like at the very beginning.

As far as we know, it could be an infinite universe going all the way back, not a beginning

infinitely long ago.

When you start off a phrase in a debate, as far as we know it could be, you're getting into

hypotheticals and again, you're not helping yourself.

It would be better if Shermer could quote from some experts in the field of quantum physics

where they're saying essentially what he wants to communicate here, but that's not going to help him either.

That the Big Bang creation from the singularity point was itself just on the

continuum of there's always been something by which I mean the nothing of quantum energy.

All right.

Let me.

Okay.

So again, we're hitting a wall here.

I'm not saying I know what was there before.

Nobody knows and we can never know as long as we're in this universe, what was there before our

universe.

It's just as possible that there were multiple universes and by this, I don't mean multiple

universes now.

I mean a sequence of these from which, for example, a collapsing black hole that collapses into

a singularity point, which is, was Stephen Hawking's great breakthrough for his PhD thesis

was that maybe this is how the universe started was a collapsing, something like a collapsing black hole singularity point.

It's entirely possible.

This is pure science fiction at the moment that.

This is pure science fiction at the moment, again, probably not the best phrase to be using to support your view.

Super advanced extraterrestrials could engineer a solar system in a star to collapse into a

black hole and create a universe.

You could have multiple bubble universes popping in and out.

Did he just say extraterrestrials?

It's entirely possible.

This is pure science fiction at the moment that super advanced extraterrestrials could

engineer a solar system in a star to collapse into a black hole and create a universe.

You could have multiple bubble universes popping in and out.

Michael.

This is a simply an engineering problem.

What would you call a being that could create a universe out of a black hole?

Michael, you're supposed to be the scientist.

You would call that God.

I'm claiming that any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial would be indistinguishable.

From the God you believe in.

You are coming up with a lot of speculations with no evidence.

As are you.

No.

You have no evidence of this God.

All you have are, I have a gap.

I can't explain it.

It's not a gap.

I think God did it.

It's not a gap.

We're not reasoning from what we don't know, we're reasoning from what we do know.

If space, matter, and time had a beginning, the cause must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial.

No.

This is a missed opportunity by Shermer.

So Shermer has a way of giving a rejoinder here, which is that there are

alternative theories to the beginning of the universe that don't entail a beginning

where the universe didn't exist and now exists in that sense, the way that Christian apologists talk about it.

But there's other possible alternative explanations.

The problem is he kind of plays footsie with those things and doesn't really explain.

He provides no evidence, no quotations to support himself, really.

And so he loses an opportunity here to do those things.

And it's really disappointing.

That does not follow.

What is it?

No, no, no.

Let me give you some of these logical sequences.

I just made these up.

Here's the paradox of perfection.

If God exists, then he's perfect.

If God exists, he is the creator of the universe.

Perfect beings must create perfect things.

The universe is not perfect.

There's no God.

Okay.

Solid logic.

Utter bullshit as an argument.

It's fallacious.

But that's the kind of stuff that all of these arguments are.

No, it's fallacious, Michael.

If this and then this and then this.

None of those follow from the points ahead of time.

Define what you mean by perfect.

Well, that's right.

You define it.

Because I can't.

We don't have a perfect.

You can't define perfect.

You just said the universe isn't perfect, but you can't define perfect?

It's not possible.

When you're talking about a world constrained by physical constraints, there's no such thing

as perfect design.

What engineers like Neil do is they find design that fits their purpose.

Like this iPhone, I unfortunately have to recharge every two hours.

Now, they could have made the iPhone a lot bigger, but if they did, I'd be lugging it around like a

suitcase.

You need to get the five.

Stick with the five.

The point here is that the engineers have to trade off between size and portability

and battery life.

So there is no perfect design unless you know what the intention of the designer is.

So the analogy there is fallacious, or the statement you said.

But let me just ask you this.

This is an important point here.

Up here.

You see right here is today.

There's yesterday.

So Frank shouldn't be asking any questions.

This is Shermer's time to ask Frank questions, and Frank is stealing that away from Shermer.

Now, Shermer shouldn't allow him to do that, but on the other hand, this isn't really helping Frank either.

This isn't Frank's time.

Frank already had his time, and it's over.

There's the day before yesterday.

There's last week.

Let's say we don't know how far back this line goes, the timeline.

Question is, can this line be infinite into the past?

This would imply, if that's true, that not that it had no beginning,

that there was no beginning infinitely long ago.

The big bang would just be the latest beginning of this universe.

There it is.

It could be multiple bangs.

It could be multiple universes going all the way back.

This would be like arguing there had to be a finite beginning or else we wouldn't be here tonight.

Okay.

No matter what would happen, you'd end up with this finite beginning.

Let me ask you this.

Okay.

I forgot what I was going to ask you.

Oh, on the design question, since you have the timeline up there.

We now know the universe is 13 .8 billion years old, and humans are roughly about 100

,000 years old.

Christianity began about 2 ,000 years ago.

What was God doing that 99 .99 % of all that time?

If this is all beautifully designed and elegantly and teleological and purposeful, and it's all here for us so that we would be

here, boom, here we are.

Why the 13 .7889 billion years of nothing?

And then I think I'll send my son to this desert place in this Bronze Age culture where no one can write,

and I'll give them the message.

I don't know what, I don't know what is going on.

This is not anything that Frank talked about in his opening statements.

And Schirmer should be attacking, I think there's like six points in Frank's opening statements.

He's not really doing that, and now he's introducing some new concept that

wasn't even there in the original discussion at all.

This is a complete waste of an opportunity.

And now, it's a hypothetical too.

I mean, how are you supposed to know the mind of somebody if they did something or they didn't do something?

I mean, this is just a waste of time, really, is what it is.

What was the purpose of all that time?

Well, Augustine actually answered that question.

He said he was creating hell for people who ask questions like that, okay?

I'm telling you, my best friends are going to be there, Hitchens, Sagan, it's going to be great.

You guys should come, it's going to be party time.

But that's a serious question though, really, because if you're building us into it as something purposeful, I realize you didn't go

there with your argument, it's a different argument.

That's okay.

How do you get to Christianity, you know, Jesus died for us with 13 .788

billion years of nothing, and then, I think I'll come in now.

We're just off topic at this point.

This is not good.

I have not read it myself, I just said I'm on the radio program.

But I will say this, that God's sacrifice is retroactive.

In fact, Hitchens asked this of me in the first debate we had.

He said, what was God doing for all that time?

And Hitchens didn't seem to realize that Christ's sacrifice was retroactive to everything that

happened before him.

So people that lived before him were still saved by his sacrifice.

So when God came, working through free creatures, a lot of people say he came 2 ,000 years ago

because you had a relative time of peace with a Roman empire that built a road system and a language, Koine Greek,

that was all around the known world at the time.

It was the perfect time for God to come and spread this message through people around the ancient world.

Did he die for the Neanderthals too?

Yes, if in fact there were Neanderthals who had the capacity to make moral decisions.

How about Homo erectus, slightly smaller brain?

If in fact that was a human being, yeah.

They're not humans, they're a different species of hominid.

How about Australopithecines, little Lucy with the little, you know, single, sort of chimp -sized

brain?

So in other words, there's a...

Turek, in his opening, talked about the beginning of the universe.

This is his case.

He talked about reason and rationality as a feature of human beings.

He talked about DNA and information in genetic

code.

He talked about objective morality.

He talked about evil and he talked about science.

This is way, way off the reservation here.

And I'm just wondering where this is all going, because like I said, seconds are ticking away from here.

Sacrifice covers it all.

How about my dog?

Does my dog get saved?

You see where I'm going with this?

Yes, dogs go to heaven, but cats don't.

Clearly they're demonic.

Here, here, we have agreement on this.

I will concede the point.

Let the record show there is agreement.

No, no, no, no, no.

I love cats.

They taste like chicken.

All right?

That's all.

Oh, wow.

Oh, my gosh.

This is devolved.

I'm sorry.

He believes in evolution.

I'm de -evolution.

Nobody's ever going to invite me to be a moderator again.

Or at least for the political candidates coming up.

How about, Frank, how about not just time, what was God doing for 13 .8 billion years, but space?

I mean, we now know that there's roughly several hundred billion galaxies, each of which contain

several hundred billion stars, and now looks like pretty much every star has half a dozen to a dozen planets, if not

more, and moons and so on.

What about all those?

What's the purpose of all that other stuff if we're supposed to be the focus, just one little third rock from the sun in this

tiny little corner of the galaxy?

Why all that space?

That hasn't been revealed to us if there are other life forms out there.

But all those life forms, I should say, all that space out there actually demonstrates the majesty of God.

I mean, if the clouds ended at the cloud tops, or if the heavens ended at the cloud tops, we'd go, hey, what's the big deal?

But when you see stars equivalent to grains of sand on all the beaches on all the earth, spread out

there, that would take us over 200 ,000 years at space shuttle speed to go between them,

you realize the majesty of God.

This is why both the Old and the New Testaments say the heavens declare the glory of God.

In fact, in Isaiah chapter 40.

In Isaiah chapter 40, Michael.

Where am I?

God is speaking and says, to whom will you compare me, or who is my equal, says the Holy One.

In other words, you want a comparison?

Here's what he says.

Lift your eyes and look to the heavens.

Who created all these stars and named them one by one because of his great strength and mighty power?

Not one of them is missing.

You know, I mean, Shermer's question isn't awful because it tends to go back.

This is finally something that actually connects to Frank's opener.

Frank was talking about the fine tuning of the universe in the beginning.

And so now he's asking, well, what about all this space in the universe?

Frank's response isn't awful, but I don't think it really connects with with Shermer's

answer either.

Maybe a better answer is that there was no space as a feature.

I mean, the space of the universe that we see now is actually evidence that there was a beginning because everything was compacted

down to a very, very finite point.

And so in the beginning, there was no space.

The space is an example of the universe expanding over time, over millions of years.

And so, you know, that's why there is space.

But I don't think emotionally speaking, this is really going to connect

or even even on an ethos level.

This is really going to connect with Shermer just saying that space is a representation of the majesty of

God.

It speaks to the base.

It speaks to the Christians in the audience, but that's all it speaks to.

How do you know that the Christian religion is the right one?

How much time you're going to get?

So, for example, there's a billion

Muslims who are absolutely certain you're going to hell because you chose the wrong religion.

And they speak with as much conviction.

They have great arguments and so on.

Or for that matter, my Jewish friends and rabbis, they don't accept Jesus as their Savior.

They believe the same God, the same book, at least the first part of the book, the Hebrew Bible.

And they know the arguments, you know, for the resurrection, the eyewitnesses, the missing, the empty tomb.

They know all those arguments.

And they go, nope, nope, I don't believe it.

So, it's interesting to me from a scientist's perspective that you get so much diversity over such a long period of

time and there's no convergence toward, yeah, that's the right one.

Like in science, like Big Bang Theory versus steady state cosmology, that was debated for a couple of decades.

Eventually, not the TV show, but the real theory won out because there was more evidence for it.

Or, you know, just pick any scientific debate.

It's kind of center shot for a few decades and then it starts to narrowly focus and then there's a convergence and a consensus.

That's the one.

These other ones are probably not true.

The thing that's curious to me about religion is that you get this sort of smattering.

This is our afterlife and this is the afterlife.

Now, this is the afterlife.

Well, which is the right one?

Well, they're all true or none of them are true.

They're not all true.

Nobody's going to say that.

They're not all true.

But what's your standard of objective standard to say, well, we know that's the right one because, look, I can point to it.

And when you point to it, why don't the Muslims go, oh, yeah.

Because it's not a process of chemistry.

You'd have to be an atheist to believe in the process of chemistry that gives you all your thoughts.

We don't.

There's a free will involved.

In fact, the way I show that Christianity is true, I go through the evidence that truth exists, God exists, miracles are

possible, and the New Testament documents are telling us the truth about the resurrection.

Because if Jesus rose from the dead, then whatever he teaches is true because he's God.

So, I just have a personal policy.

If somebody rises from the dead, I just believe whatever they say.

Okay?

Now, Michael, Michael.

I will point out in India, there's a god man named Sai Baba.

He's dead now.

But he had millions of followers.

He could raise the dead.

He said he came back from the dead.

He could perform miracles.

Millions of people believed him.

But you don't believe in Sai Baba.

Sometimes people are deceived.

But let's run a very quick experiment here.

Whoa!

Whoa!

Wait.

Stop right there.

Sometimes we are, right?

Yes.

We can be self -deceived.

I think we've just witnessed it tonight.

Okay.

And I rest my case.

Thank you very much.

No.

Michael, we're going to do a short experiment here.

This is for the Christians in the room.

Christians, I want to ask you guys a question.

I want you to think of somebody you know who's not a Christian whom you'd like to be a Christian.

Everybody got somebody?

Friend, relative?

Okay, next question.

Am I one of them?

They're thinking about you, Michael.

Next question.

Is the person you're thinking of on a relentless pursuit of truth?

They want to know if Christianity is true or not.

Or are they apathetic or maybe even hostile?

How many say the person I'm thinking of is on a relentless pursuit of truth?

A hand and a half.

How many people say the person I'm thinking of is apathetic or hostile?

Yeah, there you go.

There's the answer.

Free will.

They don't want it to be true.

Most people are not on a truth quest.

It's a nice tactic to connect with the audience there.

Get the audience engaged and interacting.

But again, in terms of real cross -examination.

Well, I don't want to say real.

But cross -examination in debate doesn't have space for talking to the audience.

For what is going on and what we've been seeing over the last several minutes.

This is really, for me, it's very frustrating.

Because there's so many missed opportunities on both sides.

Honestly.

To really engage in robust debate on this issue.

And it's very frustrating.

Wait a minute.

You're saying this about Orthodox Jews?

They don't want to know what the truth is?

I don't know what each individual person is.

They are as deeply religious as you.

But they don't accept Jesus as their Savior.

Okay, so what I'm saying is these are different kinds of questions.

People have free will.

Okay, they have free will.

They choose not to believe Jesus was the Messiah.

They even believe that there is a Messiah.

But the Messiah just hasn't come yet.

That's pretty close.

I mean, you've got to let him in for that, right?

Overall, Frank started strong when it was his turn to ask Shermer questions.

Shermer was incapable of answering any of Frank's questions directly.

He latched on to secondary questions.

And really spent a lot of time, in my estimation, filibustering.

Not really articulating what his rejoinders were in the best sense.

Now, Frank kind of slipped up a little bit and missed some opportunities to articulate better his position as well.

And then when we get to Shermer's attempts to ask questions, Shermer doesn't really ask very many questions.

He asks like a handful of them.

The rest of the time, he's just talking.

Which is really, like I said, it's frustrating because these are missed opportunities.

Shermer looks and almost it sounds exactly like Hitchens.

When Hitchens went up against William Lane Craig.

And some of the things that Shermer introduced were completely not even part of the original

debate at all.

Which leads to missed opportunities.

So, Shermer loses cross -examination.

So, those are my thoughts on the debate itself.

Once again, Shermer lost many opportunities to really hit back against Turek's position with some powerful rejoinders of

his own.

Which is why I say Turek actually won the cross -examination very clearly, in my opinion.

Who do you think won the debate?

Go ahead and leave those comments below and I'll take a look.

We'd love to get your thoughts on that.

If you would like me to take a look at a particular debate, go ahead and leave those in the comments as well.

And finally, if you like this kind of debate analysis, definitely check out our website, clearlens .org, where

we teach you how to effectively communicate your Christian faith, utilizing the principles that I

discussed in this video.

Well, thanks very much for watching and I'll see you on the next one.