Why Apologetics? A Conversation with Dr. Phil Fernandez

Revealed Apologetics

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All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today

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I am feeling a little under the weather. So I do apologize if I took some

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Advil cold and sinus. So I shouldn't be thrown into fits of sneezing, but if I do,

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I just wanna give you just a preemptive couple of remarks there. At any rate,

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I'm very happy to have Dr. Phil Fernandez on with me to discuss apologetics in general, and perhaps we'll get into some of the specific things that he's working on.

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And of course, I do want to point you into the direction of some of his books that are available on Amazon.

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I have found some of his notes and outlines to be very helpful, and so folks might be interested in that.

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Now, we usually have the show at 9 p .m. Eastern, but it is 10. So sometimes we have to work around the schedules of the guests, and that's hopefully, if there are a couple of people still up right now, hopefully you guys will find this conversation beneficial.

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So without further ado, I'm gonna just give some background on Dr. Phil Fernandez, and then

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I'm gonna invite him on the screen with me, and we'll begin this conversation, okay? Dr. Phil Fernandez has earned the following degrees, a

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PhD in Philosophy of Religion from Greenwich University, a Master of Arts in Religion from Liberty University, and a

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Bachelor of Theology from Columbia Evangelical Seminary. Dr. Fernandez is a member of four professional societies, the

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Evangelical Theological Society, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, the International Society of Christian Apologetics, the

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International Society of Christian Apologetics, and the Society of Christian Philosophers. Dr. Fernandez is the author of several books,

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The God Who Sits Enthroned, Evidence for God's Existence, No Other Gods, A Defense of Biblical Christianity, God, Government, and The Road to Tyranny, Contend Earnestly for the

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Faith, and Theism Versus Theism. He's also debated various atheists.

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I believe he's debated Dan Barker, and I think he co -authored a sort of internet debate with the atheist,

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Dr. Michael Martin. Dr. Fernandez has also contributed a chapter to The Big Argument, Does God Exist?

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Edited by John Ashton and Michael Westacott. And Dr. Fernandez honorably served his country from 1980 to 1983 in the

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United States Marine Corps. I will always appreciate, there's a comment here. I will always appreciate the love, patience, and encouragement of my wife.

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And that's behind every great man is of course a great woman, right? So I like that as I'm reading his little information segment here.

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So without further ado, let me introduce Dr. Phil Fernandez. Thank you so much,

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Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil, I'm just gonna call you Phil, if that's okay. That's okay, you can call me whatever you want there, brother.

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Well, welcome on to Revealed Apologetics. I'm happy that you could make it. Oh, it's great to be here.

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Great to be here. You sound like a good guy. Well, I appreciate that. So why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, perhaps something that I missed or some information that they, that folks might find useful about yourself?

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Well, I wanted, just because it took me about, what, 15 years to finish, but I finally finished up my doctorate of ministry and Christian apologetics through Veritas International University.

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I started it with Southern Evangelical Seminary because I was constantly following Dr. Norm Geisler around the country, which is how

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I would get enrolled. He'd start another school or take another position. And so, but I finished that doctorate of ministry, but since it took me so long to finish it, because I'm not a practical guy.

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So when it came to the project, they kept getting it rejected. No, this is a dissertation. We need a project.

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So I'll throw that in there. And so that would kind of get you caught up there.

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And then I, well, I would just say that there's a lot of, I really think that apologists, as we continue to defend the deity of Christ, God's existence,

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Jesus' resurrection, biblical inerrancy and inspiration, I also like it when we spend a little bit of time like guys like Greg Koekel do, doing cultural apologetics, because I think it'd be a shame if we need to preach the gospel, but it would also be nice to be the watchman on the wall and sound the warning.

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And I think that freedom is very, very rapidly eroding in this country. So I'm doing a lot of work right now on cultural apologetics and all.

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Sure, sure. That's an important thing. I think a lot of people get bogged down in kind of like the apologetic methodology debates, like classicalism, evidentialism, presuppositionalism, which

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I think are important topics. But we do need to, what you just said here is kind of applying some of this stuff to the culture.

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We do need to find ways to really make this applicable to the current situation and not just sit in our armchairs debating methodologies.

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Probably C .S. Lewis is probably the most balanced that I could think of in the 20th century, because,

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I mean, he covered not only rational arguments for Christianity, but he also did cultural apologetics with the abolition of man.

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And then he even led people to Christ through the imagination, kind of narrative, what

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I would call narrative apologetics. I have a book, The Fernandez Guide to Apologetic Methodologies.

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And I actually think there's about 17 different apologetic methodologies that are out there.

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And we just kind of force apologists into four or five groups when they don't really fit, so.

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Right. Well, okay, so I do wanna jump into some of the apologetic stuff, but why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you became a

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Christian, and then we'll transition into talking about what got you into apologetics. Okay, yeah.

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Well, I grew up in a Roman Catholic home. I was the grandson of Portuguese immigrants and Italian immigrants.

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And my father's first language, he was born in 1920. He wanted 13 kids.

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His first language was Portuguese. Grew up during the, he grew up during the depression and stuff.

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So the Italians were just being accepted in New Jersey because of the, you know, the mafia connection.

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They didn't know why, until they figured out the Veloci papers and the mafia families, they didn't know why every time they arrest 10 gangsters, you know, six of them are

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Italian. So they thought it reflected on the people, but then they found out, no, we were just more organized in our crime than other ethnic groups.

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And so the Italians were accepted. The Portuguese, nobody knew what a Portuguese was. So that was kind of interesting.

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So I'd hang out with some guys and they'd make fun of me for being Italian. And, but I grew up with the Italians and they made fun of me for being

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Portuguese. So one thing led to another. So I became, I was a really small guy. So I became a good fighter.

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And, and so I did some boxing back in Jersey and stuff. And that always kind of blew up in my face.

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A lot of politics in New Jersey boxing. And, you know, if you didn't knock out

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Lou Duva's guys, they'd get the decision. And the crowd would express its disfavor with that, with some choice language.

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But, but so eventually I had, you know, mopping floors and boxing. I wasn't getting anywhere.

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So a light heavyweight from the gym that I boxed at talked me into joining the Marine Corps with him.

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And he was an orphan, you know, so he didn't have anything going for him. And, and, but he wanted to be a

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Marine. So he talked me into going to Marine Corps with him on the buddy system. And so I figured, you know, I don't want to be a

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Marine, but, you know, we got hostages in, in Iran. I'm not patriotic, but, you know,

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I need to, you know, if they'll pay for, Marine would pay for my way out of Jersey, you know, I'll go with it, you know.

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And, and plus everywhere I get stationed, Rob Tucker will be there with me. Ooh, I didn't want to mention his name anyway, but it turned out he didn't show up to take the oath.

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Okay. So here I was, he convinced me to join in, sign up with him, but I ended up going into Marine Corps alone cause he didn't show up to, he didn't follow through.

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And so I thought, okay, I just threw away three years of my life, but, but with Marine Corps bootcamp was tough on me because, you know,

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New Jersey, you're taught nobody, you're from Long Island, you know this, they're taught nobody badmouth your mother or your family.

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You take them down, you take them down hard. And that's all your drill instructors do in a Marine Corps. They just, they badmouth your family, they get in your face, you can't retaliate.

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So I, I wasn't even a Christian. In fact, I was questioning God's existence at that point in my life.

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But, but I was already learning how to turn the other cheek. And cause I, the only way out of Parris Island is, you know,

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I didn't want to go get kicked out and all. Now, by the way, my friend,

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Tucker, he, he went in a month later and him and another guy ended up beating up a drill instructor and then going

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UA and went to his absence and he got busted, did break time, a long story there.

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So, so God was used to light heavyweight from my gym to get me into Marine Corps, to get me out of my comfort zone back in Jersey, where I thought it was a hotshot.

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And yet saw to it that I wasn't with this guy because it would have been a bad influence on my life.

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And so we took two different, two different tracks in life. And, but then they sent me, you know,

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Ronald Reagan gets elected when I'm in bootcamp. So then Ayatollah Khomeini's coughing up the hostages.

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So I thought, hey, you know, I don't, you know, I don't want to kill people, but if that's what my job is and they pay me to do it, you know, it's a paycheck, you know?

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And, but all of a sudden there's no war. Khomeini's coughing up the hostages.

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So they sent me to, to Washington State guarding nuclear weapons, which is like some of the most boring duty on the planet earth.

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Bin Ladens in the world are not going to mess with the United States Marines guarding nuclear weapons.

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There are too many of us and too well -trained. So you knew nobody was going to hit you. So I went from a pretty fast life style back in Jersey.

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And slow down. Really boring. I mean, I could hear birds chirping. People didn't, you know,

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I used to hate guys from Brooklyn and the Bronx. They got to the point where I'd give my right arm to meet a guy from Brooklyn or the

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Bronx because they're the only guys who understood me, you know? Sure, sure, sure. I had guys used to, they'd yell at me and question my manhood and I'd take them to the wall and they don't want to fight.

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Right. Like in New Jersey, you don't mess with a guy unless you want to fight. So, so I was like, totally like a fish out of water.

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And I thought I was gonna have a nervous breakdown. And I started drinking. That didn't, that didn't go too well.

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Oh, and in the meantime, boxing was out of the picture because I gained 20 pounds in Marine Corps bootcamp.

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They had Navy doctors looking at me because everybody else was losing 20 pounds. I gained 20 pounds, lost my six pack abs.

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I went in weight. How'd you manage to do that? Did you sneak in some jelly doughnuts and while you were in the Marine Corps? They fed me so well, but Marine Corps bootcamp, but they trained

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Marines hard, but not as hard as New Jersey boxers. So I was, I was getting out of shape and overeating.

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Hmm. Okay. And so, cause they did feed us real well. Once they found out I had been a boxer before I joined the

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Marine Corps, they realized I was just getting out of shape. So that's when I had to become a weightlifter because there's, believe it or not, there's no future for a five foot five heavyweight.

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And so I wasn't gonna get down to the lightweight class anymore. So, and -

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If you can only reach the knee, punching the knees, it doesn't really, doesn't really help you. You could, I boxed one

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Marine who was 6 '7", 270 when I got up to 160 in body weight. And, and I noticed

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I was eye level with his solar plexus. So I just kept slipping under his jab and drilling him with a right hand to the solar plexus.

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So I knocked the wind out of him and then he quit. And it was only about a minute and a half into it. So, so yeah.

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What was your record? Oh, it wasn't, it wasn't good. Only AAU sanctioned fights,

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I only had two. Lost them both. But I fought a guy, an Irish kid, Danny McElhinney, who was one of Lou Duva's fighters.

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He ended up turning pro. All the guys I fought turned pro, but I battered him for three rounds.

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Even he apologized after the fight. He knew he lost. And the crowd said, BS, BS.

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But they said, word, cause they know I got the decision. But then, but he was a junior Olympic champ.

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So the water was out. I was a hard hitter just to kind of avoid me and stuff. So it was hard to get one night fights and stuff.

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And so then I ended up gaining weight, going into 147 class. I was out of shape.

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I battered a kid, John Martin from Irvington, PAL, but I got tired.

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And I, when I get tired, instead of sitting and ducking below a punch and then throwing to the body,

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I was leaning forward and he hit me on the top of the head. It's the most embarrassing way to get knocked out.

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It doesn't even, Marvis Frazier got knocked out by, I think, James Broad. Well, let's not, well, let's not rekindle the painful memories.

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But I fought a lot of exhibitions at the Colwell Police Athletic League and other gyms and stuff.

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And I probably won, probably won two thirds of my fight, but my trainer knew I would have been better as a pro than an amateur.

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Cause I like to take my time and trade punches with guys. And that doesn't work as an amateur. And then

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I almost turned pro at age 30, a promoter out of college. Out of Portland offered me $400 for four round fights, but then

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I tore my bicep in a freak accident. So I took that as God telling me he wanted me to preach, didn't want me to get back in it.

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So why don't, why don't we transition there? So you have a military background, you're a fighter, you were a fighter.

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And what, what was the specific thing that led you to Christ? I mean, what was, how did you become a

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Christian? Well, yeah, I was looking for meaning. I didn't care about truth at the time. And I was looking for meaning, nothing seemed to make sense.

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And Marine Corps duty was so boring. They never showed me videos of Marines shining their boots and mopping floors, but that's all

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I was doing. That wasn't in the promotional video, right? Yeah. So where, where's the lava monster?

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You remember that? Remember that commercial or the Marine Corps commercial where the guy's hiding in the water? Yeah, I do.

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Yeah. You didn't know lava monsters in the Corps? Yeah, no, a lot of, a lot of mop. I wanted to take a picture of me putting the mop in the rack with other

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Marines like Iwo Jima. And I couldn't get three other Marines to do it with me. There were two pictures. But, but whatever the case, so I, I started drinking and then

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I was getting in fights, getting in trouble. So I thought, okay, I'm just going to quit drinking totally. So I just quit drinking.

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Probably the only Marine I knew that quit drinking. So then I thought, well, maybe I'll find some meaning in boxing again, but Marines don't know how to box.

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So I just kept boxing bigger and bigger football player type guy, they didn't know how to box, you know?

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So I was like, well, this is dumb. And so then I thought, well, my dad found, seemed to find meaning in Catholic mass.

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So I started going back to Catholic mass. And then a lady invited me and the other Marines to her house for a home cooked meal.

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And we got there, it was all pictures of Jesus on the wall. So I thought, oh man, I've been set up.

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But she knew she wouldn't have an open door with us. We were all from New York and New Jersey. So she said,

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I've got a friend who wants to talk to you and he's an ex -convict. And the guy had done eight years and he was a pretty tough guy.

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And so I kind of respected him. And then the Lord knew I'd only listened to Catholics on spiritual issues.

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And so it turned out they were part of the Catholic charismatic movement, but they were a back to the

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Bible movement in 1981. So at age 21, they led me to Christ. And I was seeking,

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I was looking for things. I even started reading Hal Lindsey books and I was anticipating the return of Christ, not realizing had he come at that point,

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I would have been on the wrong side of the aisle. And, but these guys presented the gospel message with me in a way that I understood.

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And so I trusted in Jesus for salvation. Then it took about two years of study in the

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Bible to realize I need to get out of the Catholic church and I need to get out of the charismatic movement.

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And after three years of navigator studies, I enrolled in Liberty University and did some of it through extension.

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They had a really good program and some of it on campus, got to be good friends with Gary Habermas, leading expert on the bodily resurrection of Christ.

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And so, one thing led to another. Eventually I started a Bible study and then people asked me to start a church.

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So I started Trinity Bible Fellowship. That was back in 88. But I loved answering Marines questions.

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I loved listening to Walter Martin, the old Bible answer man. So I got into apologetics and started defending the faith and then started debating local guys.

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And one of the local guys that I debated, I supposed to debate his teacher,

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Mr. Turner at Central Kitsap High School. But the guy's wife died a few days before the debates.

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They said, but don't worry, the captain of our high school debate team will debate you. And I'm like, yeah,

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I got graduate degrees. I can't be debating a high school student, but it would look really bad to pull out because my opponent's wife died.

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So we took the debate. Well, the guy's name was Jeffrey J. Louder. I didn't know he was gonna go on to start the world's largest atheist website at Infidels.

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And so a few years later after debating local guys, he remembered me and got a hold of me to debate an online debate, internet debate with Dr.

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Michael Martin, philosophy professor of Boston University. Back then he wrote Atheism, A Philosophical Justification and the

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Case Against Christianity. Well, folks will know because we typically do presuppositional apologetics here.

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They'll be familiar with Greg Bonson's in -depth critique series of lectures.

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Outstanding critique of Michael Martin. That's right. In fact, I probably listened to about 300 to 400 lectures of Bonson in my research on presuppositionalism.

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I actually consider him a better Vantillian presuppositionalist than Vantill was. I agree.

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Me and J .P. Moreland used to think at one point that Vantill was a babbler and he didn't know what he was talking about.

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Reading his former students, John Frame and Bonson, Vantill was a brilliant thinker but a horrible communicator.

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I mean, this guy equivocated all over the place. Sometimes there's common ground, sometimes there's not common ground.

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And so it took a guy like Bonson to say, well, what he's saying is there is no neutral ground but all the ground we stand on is

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Christian ground because God created this universe. And so I really respected

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Bonson. I can remember throwing a 30 -second fit when my wife woke me up to tell me that he had passed away once.

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Yeah. It was in 95. Thank the Lord. And I never met him but I appreciated his brilliance.

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And I love reading Gordon. I love reading guys who disagree with me. So I think there's a real place for presupposition to apologize.

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I'm rather eclectic but I'm pretty much a classical apologist, maybe even a neotomist.

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But whatever the case, I see a place for presupposition. I think we're gonna become good friends because you seem to be a presuppositionalist who doesn't question the spiritual maturity of anybody who disagrees with you.

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Right. Guys, you know. Some guys, they call me an idolater and all.

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I'm just like, whatever, dude. Yeah, yeah. But whatever the case,

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I really did appreciate Bonson's work. Gary Habermas had him at Liberty and Habermas does historical, evidential apologetics.

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And Bonson told him, no, I think you're serving a really important purpose in God's kingdom.

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He didn't tell me what the purpose was but it made Habermas. To this day, Habermas has good feelings about that.

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Well, I had Dr. Habermas on and he told me a funny story because Dr. Habermas is known for his minimal facts approach to the resurrection.

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And so he said that he presented the minimal facts to Dr. Bonson and Dr. Bonson was like, no, that's a presuppositional argument.

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He goes, well, what do you mean? He's like, well, you're hypothetically granting the standards of the unbeliever and showing that given their own presuppositions and standards of historiography that these are the facts that could be established and you could build the case for the resurrection with that.

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So I would imagine that would have been a fun conversation but definitely I think coming from a presuppositional approach myself,

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I think the work of Dr. Habermas is excellent. I teach my presupp brothers and sisters to if they wanna be as consistent within their methodology and still appreciate the work of others is learn how to contextualize their work and contextualize it within your presuppositional framework.

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And the classical argument is if you can argue from God to reason, morality and meaning, why can't you argue from reason, morality and meaning to God?

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It would seem if they're a package deal, it would seem that the argument will go either way. So I appreciate presuppositional arguments but I also think you can argue in the other direction like Nietzsche is basically saying, look, if God is dead, truth is dead, morality is dead, meaning is dead.

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I think he failed to see though, man is dead too. He thought he produced a Superman. No, man is dead.

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And Jordan Peterson sees that inconsistency in Nietzsche. But then that would seem to mean, well, then if you could argue from truth, meaning and morality to God because that's very strange furniture for a world without God, but whatever the case.

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So when I got the debate with Michael Martin, I think in 97, it caught people's attention.

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Brian Oughton, I think he's an American guy who moved to Ireland and loved my stuff.

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And then I asked permission to Firefighters for Christ. I was not a tech guy. They took my old audio cassettes, 700 lectures and I gave them to him for free.

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And they digitized it on Firefighters for Christ and it started getting millions of downloads.

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And then Apologetics 315 took it and made the ultimate apologetics package. I just wish

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Apologetics 315 would update my stuff because everybody thinks that full finance was good in 2002 and stuff, but I was the guy in 1998 that everybody laughed at.

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We were presenting the paper, the coming death of Western civilization. Well, when

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I represented in 2015, they didn't laugh anymore. And so I was taking my apologetics and go into Francis Schaeffer and C .S.

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Lewis and applying to what's going on in culture. And so I get former students.

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I started teaching on the high school level in 1999 and I get former students that are emailing me and Facebooking me all the time saying,

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Doc, you were right. I thought you're an idiot, but all this stuff is coming down now. But whatever the case, so the law was good to me.

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And then Princeton got ahold of me and Atheist Society over there. I guess

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William Lane Craig was supposed to debate one of their guys. Well, Craig showed up.

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Well, it's not hard to believe, but no atheist wanted to debate him. So Craig spoke unopposed and they were having some revival there at Princeton.

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Even a direct descendant of Jonathan Edwards got saved in that revival at Princeton.

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I got to pray with the guy before I debated Elliot Ratzman there in a room in which Einstein had taught.

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But so there I am at Princeton debating God's existence. And Elliot Ratzman, great guy, but he just laid down and died for me.

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So I connected real well with the audience. And but I also had debated, I think I debated before that though.

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I debated Jeffrey J. Lauder at a major atheist conference at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

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I never ask people, will you debate me? I get the phone call or the email or the

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Facebook thing asking me. And I turn most of them down because I teach and they want me to come in the middle of the year, but if I can make it,

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I'll do it. But so I debated - Well, why don't I stop there? Because I think that I'm fascinated with this.

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I've done a couple of debates myself, but I've turned down a lot of invitations.

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I was just invited to engage a philosophy of religion professor.

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And I just don't have the time. I mean, prep is very time consuming. How long -

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Yeah. Yeah, so you've debated Dan Barker, you've debated other atheists. What is your process in terms of, okay,

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I'm gonna debate, this is my prep. What does it look like? How do you study? How do you take notes? How do you review the material such that by the time you are there on the debate stage, you're ready to go?

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Well, before I take debates now, I haven't done, I started the

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Institute of Biblical Defense back in 1990, so I've been doing apologetics for over 30 years. So my case is there and it's no secret.

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People can go, I usually use a cumulative case for God where I'm just arguing for the preponderance of the evidence.

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Okay. You know, if you try to prove God's existence with certainty or beyond reasonable doubt, what you're saying is -

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You could leave that to the preceptors. We'll argue that way. Well, yeah, there's a question about that from classical apologists.

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We could argue about whether you're really proving the case due to the impossibility of the contrary.

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But whatever the case, and then plus I would also say Aquinas and Norman Geisler, who was a

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Thomist, they actually believed they were proving God's existence with existential necessity.

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Aquinas wasn't real concerned about logical necessity, but he believed if anything finite exists, then automatically some infinite necessary being must exist to ground the continuing existence of all finite beings.

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So Aquinas believed he was giving full demonstrations. My problem is though is

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I'm not as smart as Aquinas or Geisler, and the audience sometimes isn't smart enough to pick up on the thrust.

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So I just say, okay, well, this atheism or theism, let's look at nine different aspects of human experience, which is it more reasonable to believe?

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Because Friedrich Nietzsche in the 1900s, he believed the universe didn't need a cause because it was eternal.

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Well, now there's a thing that happened in the 1990s with Edwin Hubble and the expansion of the universe and Big Bang cosmology.

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Now pretty much everybody grants that the universe had a beginning. So now the debate between Christians and atheists is either in the beginning,

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God, either in the beginning, a miracle working God created the universe, or in the beginning, nothing created the universe.

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Now they don't wanna explain it like that, but you hear Richard Dawkins trying to spend a lot of time describing exactly what nothing is.

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Well, nothing is nothing, so nothing could do nothing, so nothing could cause nothing. I think

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Lawrence Krauss got some, Dr. Lawrence Krauss got some, I guess, not reprimanded, but I guess people were kind of taking up the task for describing nothing as a sort of something.

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Yeah, yeah, it's what Dawkins did. They play a game where there's a negative charge over here and a positive charge, and it equals zero.

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That's not nothing. Even if you wanted quantum physics to cause the beginning of the universe, a quantum event, you need the laws of probability.

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You have to, I mean, so whatever the case, but getting back to, with the debates, my preparation, so I pretty much know my stuff now, and I think you've probably been at it long enough to where you know your stuff, so the issue really is learning the guy you're debating, and that can be difficult if the guy's name is

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Elliot Ratchman, and he wrote absolutely nothing on the topic of political activism, so I didn't know what

29:52

I was gonna get. Okay. Dan Barker, I could watch 20 of his interviews, which, by the way, would be a waste of time because it's the same thing over and over again.

30:01

Sure. And I'm not saying that's good or bad. If it's good stuff, that's a good thing. Like with William Lane Craig, it's the same thing over and over again.

30:08

Sure, sure. Nobody's refuting it. Why change it? And the same with Bonson.

30:14

You watched several of his debates, but whatever the case, so it's getting to know your opponent and what he's saying, but the difficulty

30:21

I have in debates, it seems the more education, just in general, because you and I are both into education.

30:28

Sure. But it's gotta be being educated in the truth, and the fact of the matter is, though, the more educated a person is today in America, the less likely they're gonna have the ability of any to do original thinking or critical thinking.

30:44

Okay. And so I can have, if my atheist is the local garbage man,

30:51

I could have probably a much more advanced discussion and lively debate with him than with a guy who's got a four -year degree in ethics from Harvard sometimes.

31:04

I mean, it's amazing. People in our age of political correctness, they're just programmed to laugh at everybody who disagrees with them, to roll their eyes and just assume we're not educated, and to not even deal with what we're saying.

31:20

But when the audience is like that, it's kind of tough, but whatever the case, if there's open people in the audience, that's a good thing.

31:28

I'm not trying to, it's very doubtful that I'm gonna lead Dan Barker to Christ during a two -hour debate, but somebody in that audience, some student might move from their skepticism.

31:40

And after my debates, I usually get five times the crowd than the other side gets. And I get people that are talking with me, and I say, well, that's great to tell me what they liked and everything, like at Washington State University when

31:52

I debated Eddie Tobosh. And the moderator was a philosophy professor for that debate.

31:59

I'll tell you about his response to that. But these two guys were just saying where they really liked my delivery.

32:04

They liked what I had to say. And I said, so what, are you guys

32:10

Christians or what? And they said, no, we're actually agnostics, but now you're causing us to think.

32:17

And so that's a scary thing. Right now, you've got to connect with the audience, tell some good stories, maybe a few good jokes, and then give some rational arguments, but keep in mind, rationality and truth are not high on the priority list right now.

32:35

But the moderator of the debate was a gentleman who was either one of their philosophy professors at Washington State University or the head of the department.

32:46

And after the debate was over, he told me, he said, you did good. And I said, yeah, yeah, so did

32:51

Eddie. Eddie Tobosh, he did, Bonson debated Eddie Tobosh too. Craig debated Eddie Tobosh. Eddie never understood any of our arguments, by the way.

32:59

Yeah, I was never really ever impressed with - No, and that's the scary thing

33:04

I gotta say, but the less philosophically profound the atheist is, the harder the debate often is.

33:15

Okay. When you refute their stuff, they're oblivious to it, and the audience is usually oblivious to it, and they look and he doesn't, the atheist doesn't look nervous, and they think, okay, well then, the

33:27

Christian guy is just shooting the baloney. And so, like guys like Michael Martin and Jeffrey J.

33:35

Lowder, I think I really had some dialogue there, but whatever the case, the philosophy professor in Wazoo, Washington State University told me, he said, after the debate, he said, you did really well.

33:45

And I said, yeah, so did Eddie. And he looked at me like I was crazy. He said, no, no, no, you did really well.

33:52

I know he was telling me, hey, I moderated this debate, but you kicked butt, you won hands down.

33:58

But that's a philosopher. Eddie was shooting the baloney the whole debate. But whatever the case, now, when

34:03

Eddie began his closing statement, which I don't know why I ever agreed to 12 -minute closing statements.

34:09

Never agreed. A long time for a closing statement. Either five minutes or two minutes. Five minutes, yeah, five minutes.

34:14

Yeah, but anyway, the audience, it was a Friday night, and the audience wanted to party, so half of the audience got up when they found out it was his final statement and left before he even uttered it, because they didn't even enjoy listening to the guy.

34:29

But what they do, they do this thing called question bombing. They ask the same question in five or six different ways, and you have to try, a good question might take two seconds to ask.

34:44

If God, why evil? Sure, yeah. Good response might take 40 minutes. Sure.

34:49

Well, debates are all about time management, so if they just keep question bombing, it really puts us on the defensive, and that's what

34:57

Eddie did in his final 12 minutes, was say, he didn't answer this question. Yes, I did. He didn't answer that question. Well, that's the same question as the last question.

35:04

I don't know if the audience bought it, but in any case, but Eddie wasn't really that much of a challenge. But so when the philosophy professor told me

35:11

I won, I said, well, what's your worldview? And he said, well, I'm an agnostic, but my wife is a very traditional

35:21

Roman Catholic. Okay. And so I not only take her to mass, but I go to mass with her out of respect for her faith.

35:27

And he told me, he was almost embarrassed to say, he said, I got to admit, I'm starting to like it.

35:34

And so what the guy was telling me is he's a soft agnostic. Okay. In his view, he hasn't seen enough evidence to believe in God, but that doesn't mean that maybe

35:43

Eli has, and he's willing to listen. And maybe there's something to this, the religious beliefs of my wife and stuff, but he was, but that's the kind of fair assessment.

35:56

I wish I could get more of from my debates and all, but whatever the case,

36:02

I debated like Doug Kruger and State University in New York.

36:07

There, what it was too, was after the debate, again, he question bombed and I felt bad about that, but the kind of the campus crusade, the crew leader up there told me, he said, no, they've been getting harassed by their professors and they just needed to see an atheist professor get up against a

36:25

Christian professor. And they just needed to see there are answers to these objections. Yeah. William Lane Craig calls them, well, he quotes,

36:33

I don't remember what he quoted, but Dr. Craig quoted some other thinker describing, you know, the nature of these debates.

36:40

He called them power encounters, where you have these power encounters between two representatives of, you know, these positions.

36:46

And of course, when the Christian side, you know, does well, it kind of rejuvenates, you know, the

36:52

Christian audience members that like, yeah, there are answers to these, you know, and I wanna give credit there.

36:59

There are some creative arguments that unbelievers have brought to the table in a lot of these discussions, but I mean, for the most part, and I'm not saying this from the perspective of that I have all the answers, from the most part, most of the criticisms and arguments that atheists bring and are so confident, they're just really bad.

37:17

I'm just, I am encouraged when I listen to a debate from, and I listened to a

37:23

Christian who's well -informed defend the Christian position. It is a very rational position, and you don't wiggle out of it by just saying, well, you guys believe that, you know, dead people rose from the, you know, from the grave.

37:35

It's like, well, again, that's only weird if you, if you have certain presuppositions, it's not as simplistic as that.

37:42

So I've been encouraged by these debates, and I think, you know, they should continue on. And I think for the most part, people who are genuine, you know, seekers, there's some good conversations that are happening that I think provide open doors for the gospel.

37:56

Yeah, I think the way William Lane Craig put it too was that he can go and lecture on Christianity and get 200 people, and 198 of them will be

38:09

Christians, or he can debate the issue and get between two, and of course, he's

38:15

William Lane Craig. He can get between 2 ,000 and 5 ,000 people in the audience, and half of them are non -believers.

38:21

Non -believers, yeah. Yeah, so I just, the difficulty I'm having is that I have to actually try to be less scholarly and more likable.

38:39

Well, you could be both. I think you could be both. You can do both, but debates is like,

38:45

William Lane Craig says, it's all about time management. Sure. So you gotta do both in a short amount of time.

38:51

But if you seem like, if it seems like the Christian is a nasty guy talking down on the poor atheist, that's not good.

39:00

But if the atheist sounds like a spoiled brat that thinks he knows everything, and the

39:05

Christian guy is leaning on the podium and just talking like a regular guy, and I actually think the way

39:12

I talk, it's actually to my advantage, because I know sometimes you debate a guy with a

39:21

British accent or something, and it's, or an Australian accent, it's like, man, I sound like a New Jersey cab driver, but -

39:29

A New Jersey cab driver with pretty good arguments. Yeah, yeah. Well, see, and that's, I've actually had guys who've debated me who didn't know who

39:37

I was. Okay. I've seen them sitting there like this and everything, looking at the crowd, and then all of a sudden going, you know, when

39:45

I'm watching the video after the debate, then they take out the pen and they start writing real fast.

39:51

Right. Here's something else, they start writing real fast, and after a while, the things are coming too quick to write, and you just see them put down the pen and sit back.

40:00

But I would say with preparation of debates, you gotta know your opponent. You gotta know where they're, because you don't want any surprises, and you gotta try, you gotta master the sound bites.

40:11

You have to. And so if there's a way, you know, like I say things like evolution needs

40:18

God, but God doesn't need evolution. If evolution is true, you'd need a miracle -working

40:24

God to bring something from nothing, life from non -life, multi -celled animals to single -celled animals, you know, on down the line.

40:32

But once you posit the existence of God, God didn't have to use a wasteful means like evolution.

40:39

He could have created the universe in six literal days if he felt like it, you know? And so, but you gotta master the sound bites.

40:49

And I will say this too. Well, not because there's not more robust ways of laying out your case, but in the debate context, you don't always have time to go into those details.

41:03

Right. I'll put it to you this way. A scholar, the

41:11

Van Tills, the Gordon Clarks, the William Lane Craigs, the Gary Habermas, the

41:17

Norm Geislers, they can write 500 -page books on defending Christianity.

41:23

Sure. In a debate, we're better off if we think like radio talk show hosts.

41:29

It's just the kind of culture we're in. We gotta care about our target audience. And in fact, that's one complaint

41:36

I have about William Lane Craig. I definitely don't put myself in his class, but when it comes to -

41:43

Well, be careful, be careful here. I'm gonna warn you. I'm gonna warn you. Christian philosopher, Randall Rauser, criticized the kind of apologetics that William Lane Craig does.

41:56

And he did a response episode on a reasonable fate. So I can't wait to see our response video.

42:02

I think he'll actually be complimented by what I'm gonna say. Okay, I'm just kidding, of course. Yeah, he's actually,

42:12

William Lane Craig actually critiqued something I wrote that I got from Norm Geisler in my

42:18

The God Who Sits on the Throne. And all my students were upset. And I was like, you know,

42:25

I can die and go to heaven now because William Lane Craig publicly critiqued me. I was important enough for me to talk about, you know?

42:33

So I don't mind that, but I'll say this. When you meet the guy, he loves the

42:38

Lord and he loves people. Sure. But then when you see him debate an atheist and the atheist is starting to stutter and sweat and William Lane Craig looks like a rational machine,

42:53

I, you know, I haven't watched his debates for like the last 10 years or so, so maybe he's done it. But there was a time when

43:00

I was hoping that he could kind of express more of that love during the debate because right now people are looking for non, it's just the world in which we live, this postmodern world, they're looking for love, they're looking for stories.

43:17

Sure. They're probably gonna vote for the candidate that they like more. And they're very gullible, they'll listen to whatever the media tells them, you know, and stuff.

43:26

So, but in your textbooks, you can give a 200 page argument or response, but in the debate, all you got is a soundbite.

43:38

Yeah, well, I think, in my opinion, I think, I mean, people who know me,

43:45

I mean, my favorite apologist is Greg Bonson, but I have to say,

43:51

Greg Bonson and William Lane Craig and maybe a few others, I think are some of the best debaters, well,

43:58

Greg Bonson no more, but some of the best debaters Christianity has. And I think that Dr.

44:03

Craig has mastered a good balance of content with an air of humility.

44:10

He never comes off arrogant and he always like a cherry on top at the end, you know, whether you agree with Dr.

44:17

Craig or not, he always adds that personal testimony, which I think really connects with a lot of people.

44:22

And I haven't watched him in the last 10 years and all, but I'm just like, have you ever met Dr. Craig? No, I actually had a very brief,

44:31

I mean, I think I asked him something on Facebook and he answered me like two or three times, but it was very brief.

44:36

I was hoping, I had Kevin Harris on and hoping that I could. Yeah, but he's the kind of guy, him,

44:44

Gary Haramass, J .P. Moreland, not so much Norm Geisler, I love Geisler, but he's gruff on the outside.

44:50

But Haramass, Moreland and Craig, you talk to them for five or 10 minutes and you just wanna, even if you're arguing with them, you just wanna stop and hug the guy.

45:00

I mean, the love of the Lord just oozes out of them. And I just wish there were some way, but you know,

45:08

Craig says too, some guy tried to judge his scholarship based on his debates. He said, look, debates are all about time management.

45:14

You wanna judge my scholarship, read my 60 or 70 page peer reviewed papers that I write.

45:21

Read scholarly books that I write, the ones that don't sell that much, not the ones that he writes for a public audience.

45:29

So, but whatever the case, what I'm getting at though, is that we just have to figure out how can we give a solid rational defense of the faith to a culture that doesn't care about reason or truth anymore.

45:47

Now you can get your guys in the engineering department that still care. Okay. Okay, but when you get somebody who's like majoring in gender studies,

45:57

I mean, what are you gonna do, man? I think you're actually correct.

46:02

And I know a lot of people who watch my show are on YouTube a lot. I think what you're saying rings very true and people who are listening might actually disagree with you since the

46:13

YouTube world of apologetics is such a lively thing and people are very much concerned with rational arguments.

46:20

But in defense of what you just said, I mean, we don't live on YouTube. We live in the real world.

46:26

The majority of people reflect what you just said before. I think what you're saying though too is that your ministry attracts thinkers.

46:38

Mm -hmm. When you go to a university, you get what you get. Mm -hmm.

46:43

And some thinkers might show up, but a lot of them feelings people show up just because of the direction of our culture.

46:52

And so it's crazy. So that gives me some hope that maybe videos of my debates are impacting more people than the actual debates themselves.

47:06

However, I did have several people who have seen my debates in person and they said, look, we watched your debates online and thought you're a really good debater.

47:16

You're a powerful speaker, powerful thinker. But then they say, but seeing you in public is like totally different.

47:25

And it's kind of like, I think I bring some of my preaching into the debates. Sure. Teaching, it's one intellect teaching another intellect.

47:35

Preaching, it's the intellect, emotions, and the will. Trying to impact the intellect, emotions, and the will.

47:41

Just trying to impact the whole person through the power of God. And that's another thing too, get prayed up for debates.

47:48

Because it's not just a power encounter in an intellectual sense, it's a power encounter in a spiritual sense.

47:55

I can honestly say that I could sense a spiritual power too, like Dan Barker, that I haven't quite, and all the atheists

48:05

I've debated, I've hugged them and they hugged me back. Dan Barker, it's like hugging a wall.

48:11

There is some bitterness there. But he will smile to the audience and then look back at you and scowl.

48:21

So he really knows how to work a crowd. And his organization will fill the deck with fire -breathing atheists.

48:29

They'll fill that crowd. So you'll get, you'll be thinking, hey, my number one goal is to get out of this building alive tonight.

48:36

But whatever the case, like with Doug Kruger, a big guy, turned out we both like Uriah Faber, an

48:44

MMA guy. So he really hit it off. But whatever the case, but be prepared.

48:53

And you gotta know not just what you're defending, but you gotta also know how your opponent comes at it.

49:01

And you can say early on in my debates in the 1990s, I'd look at an audience. And if a guy gave a bogus argument,

49:08

I looked at the audience and their nonverbal communication showed me that they just didn't, they weren't impacted by what he said,

49:16

I could just ignore it. Sure. Nowadays, it just seems like the deck is stacked so much against Christianity that somebody could say, you know, believing in the

49:32

God of the Bible is like believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And there's people in the audience will, oh yeah, that's a good one.

49:40

That's a good argument and stuff. And like, you know, I'd like to ask Richard Dawkins, how much money are they paying you to tour college campuses throughout the world to argue against the existence of the

49:53

Flying Spaghetti Monster and to write books refuting his existence? Then nobody's paying you a dime, but you're making lots of money arguing against Christianity.

50:03

So I don't think it's a good analogy. I think there's something about the Christian God where that's a worthwhile endeavor if you oppose the

50:11

Christian God to engage in dialogue, but nobody's dialoguing about the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

50:17

So that's a lousy analogy. But audiences, a lot of audiences pick up on that and all.

50:23

So I love apologetics and I wanna see more of it, not less of it.

50:29

And I wanna see both the presuppositional and the classical. And I hope that the presupps and the classical guys can be friends like the

50:39

Greg Bonsons and Gary Habermasses. Because I, you know, but I, you know,

50:45

I just. Hey, and that's possible without compromising your convictions.

50:51

Yeah, yeah, I just, I got a friend, a really good friend, great guy, but he just posted something where he says, if you give evidence for God, you're acting like God is subservient to the evidence.

51:05

And in my way of thinking, that's kind of like questioning the spiritual maturity of those who would do that.

51:15

And, but, you know, two weeks later, he's at ICR, Institute for Creation Research, because he's a young earther.

51:23

And I thought to myself, I wonder if he knows that the founder of the

51:28

Institute of Creation Research was Henry Morris, who wrote a book, Many Infallible Proofs, where he gave classical arguments for God's existence.

51:37

So he's one of the, was one of these guys that made God subservient to the evidence.

51:45

So, so I just think there just needs to be a little bit more grace there. You can say, well, I disagree with them. And I don't think it's the scriptural way of arguing.

51:53

You know, but it's like, when I talk about Calvinists, I'll say, I disagree with them, but if they're trusted in the true

52:01

Jesus of the Bible alone for salvation, they're a brother in the

52:06

Lord. And I love Darcy Sproul's stuff. But, and I really, really loved, really loved

52:14

Bonson. I could listen to him all day. And, but - And when

52:21

I think of Bonson too, I mean, he died in 1995. I was in like middle school.

52:28

I think I was in like sixth or seventh grade. And when I started listening to him, like years after high school,

52:35

I felt like I knew him. And I always thought like, man, this, this guy, even it almost, there was one time where I got choked up thinking about like, man, like,

52:47

I wish I would have met him. He kind of has that great connection as an intellectual thinker, but just also a down to earth sort of guy.

52:55

And so he very much impacted me in a very powerful way when I got started, and even today, of course.

53:01

Well, you talk about power encounters too. He can just ask one question and just shuts down the whole opposition with just one question.

53:12

And so, yeah, he was a brilliant guy. I felt like I knew. It's dangerous when you meet guys that you don't really know.

53:20

People come up to me all the time and they start talking about me and calling me Phil and giving me a big hug and talking about events.

53:29

Well, you feel, when I listen to someone, when you listen to someone, you feel like you know them. And I say,

53:35

I apologize, I don't remember your name. And they say, oh, we never met. I've listened to like 500 of your,

53:41

I've got 1800 lectures, sermons and debates online. So I've got some people who've listened to 500 to 1000, things that they feel like they know me.

53:50

And so sometimes, if you would have bumped into Bonson while he was, well, if you had listened to him before he died and then bumped into him, you probably would have been in an awkward time where you would have been talking to him like your old buddies, forgetting that, oh, wait, he doesn't know me.

54:08

And - Your voice lived in my car as I was listening to CDs. So yeah,

54:13

I get guys, they walk up to me, says, hey, my daughter does a really good impersonation of you, of my voice and stuff.

54:23

And I've had guys in airports. I got off at a transfer of flights, in the

54:31

Denver airport. And a guy walked up and said, you're Dr. Phil Fernandez, aren't you? And I said, oh yeah, you recognize me, huh?

54:37

He said, no, no, I recognize your voice. I listened to your stuff online. I didn't know what you looked like, but I heard you witnessing to the guy in a plane.

54:45

I was sitting four rows behind. I didn't want to interrupt you. And so it's nice when people can recognize your voice and stuff like that.

54:56

But yeah, but Bonson was one of those guys. I would like to have seen if he had an extra 30 or 40 years to him.

55:06

And I mean, there's guys like Arminius, Calvin, I don't even think lived too old.

55:12

Did he? How old was Calvin? I don't remember how old he was, but he was not as young. Arminius was like 49,

55:18

Aquinas was like 59. I've outlived these guys. Pascal was 39. So -

55:24

Yeah, that's right, Pascal. That's right. So it's just like, I think we'd be having this interview on Mars if Pascal lived another 50 years.

55:32

Calvin was born 1509. He died 1564. Yeah, so he's only 55.

55:38

Yeah. I'm gonna get to heaven and tell these guys, I'm gonna say, hey, I lived longer than you guys.

55:44

Yeah, but they're gonna be like, yeah, but I wrote the Institute, so. I did more work than you.

55:51

When I was in my 20s. That's awesome.

55:57

So let me ask you, and then we'll kind of move into some questions. There's some questions in the comments here for you.

56:03

So maybe we could take a couple of those and then we'll wrap things up. But you said that when people listen to your stuff, they're kind of listening to Phil Fernandez from many years ago.

56:12

And so it's not really updated. The lectures that we mentioned at the beginning at Apologetics 315.

56:20

How would you describe the old Dr. Fernandez and the new Dr. Fernandez in terms of what you used to focus on and what you are now currently working on in the realm of apologetics?

56:31

Well, I'd say two things. Just one is, everybody, even professors continue to learn.

56:41

So college level lectures that I gave in 1999 or 2000 that show up on Firefighters for Christ.

56:50

Well, I'm teaching those same courses now 20 years later. And now we've got the video for them as well.

56:59

And so it just, number one, just becoming more current in the things you were talking about 20 years ago.

57:07

So often I'll hear from people like, well, yeah, Fernandez was good to form the foundation for apologetics, but then you gotta move on to these other guys.

57:15

Well, I've moved on myself. But the second thing is, while continuing to defend the deity of Christ, the bodily resurrection, biblical inspiration and inerrancy,

57:29

God's existence, refuting the problem of evil, defending the possibility of miracles, while continuing to do traditional apologetics, dealing with those same issues that Christian thinkers have dealt with for the past 2000 years,

57:45

I've also began to look more into, and I was doing this already in the 80s.

57:52

Okay. But in 1998, I wrote The Coming Death of Western Civilization as a peer reviewed paper for a regional meeting of the

58:01

Evangelical Theological Society. And Stanley Grenz attended it, and he was an Amillennialist. He thought things were getting better with post -modernism and everything.

58:09

So we butt heads. And then two guys took his side, two guys took my side.

58:15

And after I talked with them, I found out they were recent graduates under J .P. Moreland. But I was basically sounding the alarm that if Western civilization, if America doesn't repent, we all want revival, but nobody wants to repent.

58:32

Well, no repentance, no revival. Sure. And 2

58:38

Chronicles 7 .14 is a great passage, but that's a promise given to Israel.

58:45

So it's not necessarily that even if we have repentance, we might be beyond the point of no return here in America.

58:53

And so I would like to see apologists doing more of the Francis Schaeffer, his work, Back to Freedom and Human Dignity, and C .S.

59:01

Lewis, The Abolition of Man, not just, I mean, don't get me wrong, what's more important than defending and sharing the gospel?

59:11

So I don't wanna minimize that at all. Sure. But in the meantime, let's also do some cultural apologetics because it's a shame when some of the best cultural apologists out there right now aren't even

59:22

Christians. Guys like David Horowitz, who's a Jewish agnostic, and Jordan Peterson, who believes in God kind of because he lives like there's meaning in life, but he's a

59:37

Jungian psychologist, but he's basically arguing if the new atheists, if they ever won the day and we got rid of biblical

59:45

Christianity, the alternative is gonna be the gulags and the concentration camps. Atheism doesn't bring anything to the table.

59:53

So even Jordan Peterson, who believes, though, the Bible is filled with myths, he still believes they're myths that teach eternal truths that have given

01:00:05

America the wisdom to produce the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of mankind.

01:00:11

And he's not willing to give up on those eternal truths. Now, the good thing is he's reading C .S. Lewis and Lewis learned from Tolkien that myths don't have to be false.

01:00:23

Sure. You could have a true story. You could have a true story that teaches eternal truths.

01:00:32

And so when Jordan Peterson actually weeps, you know, our preachers quote John 3 .16, we don't even weep anymore.

01:00:39

He actually weeps when he talks about just the possibility of the gospel of the

01:00:46

Lord Jesus Christ, of Jesus really, God really becoming a man. And pretty much invading this planet with his love and his truth.

01:00:58

He says, that's just too much. It overwhelms me. And he weeps about it.

01:01:05

And then he talks about he's never met anybody. He said that would change everything. And he's never met a professing

01:01:10

Christian who really personifies the changes that he would expect to see.

01:01:16

That's what C .S. Lewis says, the best argument for Christianity is Christians. But the best argument against Christianity is

01:01:24

Christians. It just depends which Christians you're talking to. And unfortunately, Jordan Peterson hasn't seen too many of the good ones.

01:01:31

The good thing is William Lane Craig has spoken to him. And Gary Abermass has spoken to him.

01:01:37

And so, you know, we need to pray for him. But I really like my, you know, I salute Votie Baca for writing fault lines, critiquing critical race theory, which is making inroads into the evangelical church today.

01:01:55

But there's an example of cultural apologetics. The guy, I don't agree with him on everything, but live not by lies,

01:02:03

Rob Dreyer, is doing a good job preparing Christians for the coming persecution.

01:02:10

And so as we defend the truths of Christianity, I think we also need that C .S.

01:02:17

Lewis, Francis Schaeffer branch where we're willing to say, now, if we reject biblical

01:02:26

Christianity, this is what things are gonna start looking like. And, you know,

01:02:31

I've had students who are non -believers that have now come to Christ 10, 15 years later, because what they're reading in the newspaper, as if somebody's reading newspapers, what they're seeing online sounds a lot like what

01:02:45

I said was gonna come down. You know, like I was teaching them about liberation theology and ninth graders, liberation theology and black

01:02:56

Christology and things of that sort, feminist Christology, you know, back in the late 1990s, early 2000, they laughed at me.

01:03:05

I said, nobody believes this stuff. And I said, they believe this stuff in academia and it's gonna trickle down.

01:03:12

And, you know, and then all of a sudden they see it and people actually embracing those ideas, they go off to college and they find out that, you know, if you think

01:03:24

Jesus was a practicing homosexual and came to fight for gay rights, people who went on, they act like you're brilliant.

01:03:33

And I told my students about that in 1999 in ninth grade. That's ridiculous. Yeah, they thought nobody could believe such things.

01:03:41

Oh, well, I taught Christian apologetics to middle school, high school students. And I still get people messaging, they went off to college and be like, oh my goodness, like everything you said, that's like, we need to prepare young people to interact with this sort of stuff, even though it sounds weird.

01:03:57

And I worked in a school where many of the kids the Christians just lived in a bubble. So they weren't aware that people believed all sorts of, you know, a bunch of these crazy things.

01:04:05

Yeah, and it's crazy too because there's definite benefits from living in a, you know, parenting is sheltering, there's definite benefits from living in a bubble.

01:04:14

But then if you're gonna take that homeschooled or Christian educated kid, that youth group kid, and then throw them to the lions at a secular school, they're gonna get torn apart.

01:04:25

Sure. And so what I like is I tell the students, there's no objection to the

01:04:31

Christian faith you're gonna hear. It might be a different variation of it, but there's no objection to the

01:04:37

Christian faith that you're gonna hear on the college campus that you didn't already hear at our high school,

01:04:43

Crosspoint High School. Sure. And the reason why I know that is because by approximately 380

01:04:50

AD, every objection to Christianity had been refuted by a guy named Augustine.

01:04:56

And so what atheists have been doing from then on is just changing the terminology using big words. That's also a little advice

01:05:02

I can give you on debates. One of the toughest things about debates is listening to the pontificating of your opponent to try to figure out what old outdated refuted argument is he resurrecting using different terminology?

01:05:20

Because I can guarantee it's not gonna be something new. Yeah, yeah.

01:05:26

Very good. All right, well, let's move to some questions and then we'll wrap things up a bit. I've greatly enjoyed this conversation and I'm looking forward to talking with you some more, even if I have you on again or just on the phone or something like that.

01:05:38

I'd love to stay connected. Where do you live? I live in North Carolina, Clayton, North Carolina. It's about a half hour away from Raleigh.

01:05:46

I was at Southern Evangelical Seminary, spent a lot of time there. Okay, yeah. Well, hopefully we can connect and maybe we can do something together.

01:05:54

That'd be cool. All right, well, let's get to some questions here. Let's see here.

01:06:00

Okay, that's pretty cool. The Sire, his real name is Vincent. He says, Phil is one of the first people

01:06:05

I've watched. That's true for a lot of people. A lot of your stuff online and like we said before,

01:06:10

Apologetics 315, pretty cool. So here's a question from the Sire and this is kind of a philosophical question.

01:06:16

He's asking, what is Phil's view on abstract objects? And maybe someone's curious as to what you believe about some of those philosophical issues.

01:06:22

Are you a conceptualist? Are you an anti -realist? Yeah, I would classify myself as a metaphysical realist.

01:06:32

I believe there are. I like Augustine. I'm not totally sold on Thomism.

01:06:38

I was taught by Thomists. Studied under Norm Geiser and Richard Howe, but I tend, my default position is

01:06:45

Thomism, but I do like Augustine's platonic way of thinking that eternal unchanging ideas just hanging out there don't make much sense.

01:06:59

Sure. So if they exist, they must exist in an eternal unchanging mind. And so I actually think that, that Aquinas kind of salvaged

01:07:13

Aristotelian thought and Augustine salvaged platonic thought in that without the

01:07:23

Christian, without Christian revelation, they left some open -ended things that can only be settled through the

01:07:31

Christian worldview. But I think that there are eternal unchanging ideas in the mind of God.

01:07:40

I think there are, I think one plus one equals two is a real truth that you can't pick it up.

01:07:49

You can't throw it. It's not physical, but I think it's an eternal unchanging truth.

01:07:55

Now, I do also think that God does all his thinking in one eternal thought. You know, he doesn't think one thought at a time and learn things.

01:08:03

Right. And only Jesus in his human nature, when God the Son became a man, could learn things in his human nature, in his divine nature.

01:08:12

He's all knowing. God was all knowing throughout all eternity. But so I don't usually engage too much on the philosophical level when it comes to that, but I'm not a nominalist.

01:08:26

I don't think that, you know, I don't think that universals are just things that we give names to because we think they have something in common.

01:08:38

I think they do share something in common, some kind of universal thing, so.

01:08:44

So you would categorize yourself as a conceptualist so that these abstract objects are concepts within the mind of God?

01:08:54

I'm somewhere between, you know, if you're talking about a conceptualist as also a metaphysical realism,

01:09:03

I'm okay with the title. Yeah, that's what I'm referring to. Yeah, yeah. Because some would take conceptualism to a degree that I wouldn't.

01:09:14

But I'm saying there are real things that exist that are not physical, even beyond the spirits of men and angels that are spirit beings.

01:09:32

There really is a thing that exists called love. And I think it comes from the nature of God, flows from the nature of God.

01:09:42

But, you know, the philosophy professor who denies the reality of love in a lecture hall will still go home that night and tell his wife he loves her.

01:09:52

You know, how much does love weigh? Can you bounce it? How far can you throw it? So, you know, it's one of those deals where I just think that there are real abstract objects.

01:10:09

That to go beyond that is, you know, I'm more a philosopher of religion, just to do the basic, the traditional arguments for God.

01:10:17

Sure. And then studying under Gary Habermas, the minimal facts case. I will say this though too, with the minimal facts case,

01:10:25

I believe in a one -two punch using that, but I still believe in arguing for the reliability of the

01:10:32

New Testament. I believe the church, in my view, the early church fathers, who they told us wrote the

01:10:39

New Testament books, and they hold much more weight to me than New Testament scholars, 2000 years later, speculating about it.

01:10:49

So I'm okay with only accepting what New Testament scholars will give us to build a case for the resurrection, but that doesn't mean that's the only evidence we have.

01:11:00

Sure. And I watched Michael Shermer, one of my former high school students, who

01:11:07

I helped lead to the Lord. He was an atheist when he was here, and now he's got an MDiv degree from Western Reform Seminary.

01:11:15

He's working on a European PhD degree. When he debated Michael Shermer, I watched Michael Shermer squirm because when

01:11:23

Shermer asked, well, what eyewitnesses do you even have? And usually the response you get is we have

01:11:30

Paul because we've conceded so much to New Testament scholarship. And he started saying, well,

01:11:38

Matthew was an eyewitness of the resurrection, and John was an eyewitness of the resurrection, and we have

01:11:46

Peter and James. And I watched Shermer on his smartphone freaking out, and he couldn't even find a response to that online because evangelicals don't use those arguments anymore.

01:12:01

So I recommend reading like Henry Thiessen's New Testament introduction.

01:12:10

He wrote it originally in the 40s because he's still using Darwinism. Darwinian thought and Enlightenment rationalism had an influence, the seminaries, to the degree they have now.

01:12:20

And then I would read John Wenham re -dating Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and then re -dating the

01:12:26

New Testament by John A .T. Robinson. Look outside the box a little bit because there's so much speculation with these

01:12:35

New Testament scholars. There's a wealth. I detail this in my hijacking the historical

01:12:40

Jesus in a chapter on re -dating the New Testament. All right, thank you for that.

01:12:45

There's another question here. What's your thoughts about the relationship of inerrancy and apologetics? Yeah, okay,

01:12:52

I'm the vice president of the International Society of Christian Apologetics. And I was supposed to be the president, but COVID happened.

01:13:01

So I'm gonna be vice president for four years instead of two years before I get the presidency next

01:13:09

March, assuming there's no other pandemic. But Norman Geiser founded in 2006 the

01:13:17

International Society of Christian Apologetics because the

01:13:22

Evangelical Theological Society, people were signing the statement that they uphold inerrancy, but they were watering it down.

01:13:30

Like God bless Mike Lacona, he's a friend of mine, but the fact of the matter is he is okay.

01:13:39

He believes that some of the gospel authors were confused about details in some of their accounts.

01:13:46

And so he's basically saying he's an inerrantist, but he's really redefining what we've commonly called an error.

01:13:53

So I think that the question is, if the question is what's the relationship of inerrancy to -

01:14:06

So let me, maybe I can rephrase. Mere Christianity, I would say there is no relationship.

01:14:11

And I know if you're defending mere Christianity like C .S. Lewis, you don't need to defend inerrancy. You're just trying to defend

01:14:18

God's existence, the possibility of miracles, Jesus's resurrection and deity.

01:14:24

But if you're trying to defend a robust evangelical, if you're doing, if you're defending evangelicalism, then

01:14:37

I think it's right back to the battle for the Bible and Harold Lenzel and R .C. Sproul and Francis Schaeffer and Norman Geisler that we do need a robust.

01:14:44

So I basically, I think a lot of evangelicals are actually neo -evangelicals.

01:14:51

Sure. And so I do think that we need a society like ISCA that is defending a robust view of inerrancy and really takes the

01:15:02

Chicago Statement in 1978 seriously. At the same time, that doesn't mean

01:15:09

I take debates on college campuses defending inerrancy. However, I am an evangelical.

01:15:16

I claim to be an evangelical. I believe in inerrancy. So I'll also defend inerrancy, but I see more of inerrancy as more of an in -house debate.

01:15:26

And I think if our

01:15:32

Christian apologists also happen to be inerrantists, I would sleep better at night as well.

01:15:39

But that doesn't mean, I'm a young earther. You won't catch me defending young earth creationism at Washington State University.

01:15:48

Okay, so in other words, I don't think, some debates tend to be more intramural yet very, very important.

01:15:56

And so when it comes down to what kind of Christians are we, are we really traditional evangelical Christians?

01:16:02

Then I think we need to defend inerrancy. But our culture is so far away.

01:16:11

Me, from biblical Christianity, it used to be if you could just show somebody something that the Bible says it, they would accept it.

01:16:17

Because there were non -believers who believed the Bible is God's word. I just never read the thing and I don't go to church. Nowadays, if you show them, well, the

01:16:24

Bible says this, they say, well, why should I believe the Bible is true? I think it's just a bunch of myths written by men.

01:16:29

So whether you're presuppositionalist or a classical apologist, something else has to take place there and for that conversation to continue.

01:16:39

But I think inerrancy, I'll put it to you this way. I think inerrancy is very, very important for evangelical apologists.

01:16:50

Though, if they're just defending mere Christianity, if you're gonna try to defend the robust evangelical

01:16:56

Christianity like Norm Geisler does in his Christian Apologetics and the book he co -authored with Frank Tarrick, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an

01:17:05

Atheist, they give arguments for inerrancy. But you won't even see arguments for New Testament reliability in William Lane Craig's books.

01:17:15

When you do, it's written by Craig Blumberg. I was there in 1995 when

01:17:22

William Lane Craig was arguing with Paul Feinberg. Sondervin didn't wanna put his book,

01:17:29

Apologetics and Introduction, which is now Reasonable Faith in print unless he added that chapter. So he ended up going to Crossway Books.

01:17:35

They still demanded a chapter on New Testament reliability, but most New Testament scholars won't give you that.

01:17:41

So Gary Habermas and William Lane Craig, God bless them, don't like that I have chapters defending

01:17:46

New Testament reliability. Watch the edition, the latest edition of Reasonable Faith in the preface to the latest edition,

01:17:53

William Lane Craig apologizes for having to have that chapter written by Craig Blumberg on New Testament reliability.

01:18:04

Now, does Craig believe in New Testament reliability? You bet he believes in it. But notice, since very few of the world's leading

01:18:10

New Testament scholars will give you that, he doesn't think we need it to defend mere Christianity, and he doesn't wanna alienate them.

01:18:18

He thinks he's got an open door, but I agree with Norm Geiseler. I think sometimes we respect, we wanna be respect, sometimes our desire to be respected in academia overrides our desire to please the

01:18:31

Lord. And I think we ought to wear New Testament reliability and inerrancy as a badge of courage. Now, whether or not you wanna defend that on a college campus where you don't think they're open to it, that's up to the individual apologist.

01:18:46

Sure, sure. All right, thank you. We'll take two more questions and then we'll wrap things up. And again, I've been enjoying this a lot.

01:18:52

And so I thank you in advance. I'm gonna thank you again towards the end, but thank you. You're doing good.

01:18:58

I enjoyed talking with you. I think you and I would probably get along. Yes, most definitely. Now, this question's on apologetic methodology.

01:19:05

I am a hardcore presuppositionalist, and we're gonna differ here, but I promise for the sake of this interview, you can be as open and honest in answering this question and you'll get no pushback from me.

01:19:16

Okay, so here's a question. What would be some of your criticisms of presuppositionalism you find most compelling?

01:19:23

Maybe one or two things you think, yeah, presuppositionalism's got really good things to offer, but here's some issues as to why

01:19:29

I'm not a presuppositionalist. Yeah, I actually think presuppositionalism would not have come into existence had it not been for post -Kantian skepticism.

01:19:39

That would Emmanuel Kant, with Rene Descartes, all of a sudden, rather than metaphysical realism, you had epistemological dualism, where you separate your idea of the object, of the perceived object and the object itself, and that kind of set the stage, even though Descartes was trying to defend

01:20:00

Christianity, for Kant to question whether the categories of the mind, which enable us to interpret reality, whether or not that really does get us to know reality or only reality, are we imposing meaning on reality?

01:20:19

And I think with that kind of skepticism, and then the Kantian and Jungian, David Jung, the attacks on the traditional arguments,

01:20:29

Christians had to make a choice. And I think one choice was to stick with metaphysical realism and refute

01:20:36

Kant. Other choices, the other choice would be to accept Kant, what

01:20:42

Kant is saying, and try to either refute him, like Stuart Hackett, he believed that God preformed the categories of the mind to give us real knowledge about the world outside our minds, the real world out there.

01:21:03

But I think that the presuppositionalists move to the point where you have to have your worldview first and then interpret the facts.

01:21:15

And I would say, I'm not opposed to presuppositions, but I think presuppositions can be questioned.

01:21:21

And I think that's what the presuppositionalist does, he questions the presupposition of the non -believers.

01:21:27

But the non -believer is questioning the presupposition of the presuppositionalist. And so I think you can argue effectively from God to truth, meaning and morality, but I think you can also argue from truth, meaning and morality to God as well.

01:21:47

I think that epistemological priority does not equal metaphysical priority.

01:21:53

I think it's a category mistake of the presuppositionalist to assume if someone is arguing first for something in the universe, or let's say somebody argues for the universe first and then concludes that therefore there must be a

01:22:08

God who created it, just because epistemologically the universe came first in that discussion doesn't mean it has metaphysical priority to God.

01:22:19

I mean, it's like, you know, Philip brought Nathanael to Jesus, just because Philip brought

01:22:29

Nathanael to Jesus didn't mean that Nathanael held higher regard for Philip than he did for Jesus.

01:22:36

He was just an instrument bringing him to the authoritative God. So I'm gonna be publishing a book and I express my love for Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til and Bonson in the book, but I'll be doing like presuppositionalism, a critique.

01:22:56

I'm not expecting a wide readership, but I do think that presuppositionalism is a deep enough issue to where soundbites don't do it justice.

01:23:05

And so I'd recommend probably by the end of summer to probably be in print, just probably print on demand and just get it out there so I don't have to try to answer in soundbites on that topic and all.

01:23:21

Well, if you write a book critiquing presuppositionalism, I can guarantee that I will read it. I'll give it a read, but well, thank you so much.

01:23:32

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts there. And again, for folks who are presuppositionalists who are listening, that's okay to hear criticisms of presuppositionalism.

01:23:41

Take the criticism and think it through. And if you think it's insufficient, you formulate your thoughts and you share your responses.

01:23:49

So that's how brotherly interaction happens when you are interacting with someone you disagree with.

01:23:54

Yeah, I actually think the greatest critique of Vantill's Transcendental Argument came from one of his greatest students,

01:24:00

John Frame, who calls himself a presuppositionalist of the heart. And what that actually means, he's not really a

01:24:08

Vantillian presuppositionalist. I would classify Francis Schaeffer, John Frame, and John Carnell as a verificationalist or neo -presuppositionalist.

01:24:23

They're not really true Vantillian presuppositionalists. I know a presuppositionalist who uses the

01:24:28

Kalam argument. And I say like - Well, that's not inconsistent. Yeah, yeah, you can't be a true...

01:24:36

And so what I told him is tell people you're a - Well, I would say that's not inconsistent. You can use,

01:24:42

I would argue that a presuppositionalist can use traditional arguments. So for example, Vantill didn't have an issue with the traditional arguments as long as you formulated them in a way that didn't sacrifice your

01:24:53

Christian presuppositions with respect to neutrality and autonomy and things like that. So when

01:24:59

I spoke with Dr. Frame some years back, I met with him at RTS in Orlando. He had told me that shortly before Dr.

01:25:08

Bonson passed away, he was working on writing a book in which you can restructure some of the traditional arguments within a presuppositional context.

01:25:17

So it's definitely not impossible, although not many presuppositionalists do it.

01:25:23

Yeah, but it's not... Vantill, I would argue though too, is certain things that he said enabled him to excuse himself when he did a little bit of classical apologetics.

01:25:37

Okay. If we take that to heart, it makes you wonder why was he then so hard?

01:25:43

He acts like we're a bunch of Romanists, you know? And going back to Roman, like I think, you know, would you agree with the statement that if the only way that any finite being, any contingent being, the only way any contingent being could exist would be if necessary being, infinite being, then has to exist the ground existence of finite being?

01:26:15

Yeah, I would say that you have necessary existence grounding derivative existence or contingent existence.

01:26:20

Yeah, but that's, I just summarized the first three ways Aquinas argued for God's existence.

01:26:27

Right, but the difference would be, so for example, I could agree with that fact, but I don't think, as you mentioned before, where Vantill clumsily differentiated between common ground and neutral ground,

01:26:38

I don't think that that fact is understood independent of a worldview that would make sense out of that fact.

01:26:45

So I could affirm, I could affirm, I think therefore I am, but the I is understood within a worldview context in which

01:26:53

I would argue that the Christian worldview makes sense out of identity or something like that. Yeah, but if the non -believer can believe one plus one equals two and get that right, and God said that he made his existence known to all mankind so that through creation, so man is without excuse, and even

01:27:11

Vantill, not like Clark, Clark denies that he believes that God's revelation doesn't get through, Vantill believes it does.

01:27:17

So I mean, at the very least, I would say that Vantill, if he's gonna be consistent, which he wasn't always,

01:27:26

Boston's very consistent, but I think if Vantill was consistent, I think he would have to say that Aquinas was stating a fact.

01:27:37

Oh, well, I don't think Vantill would disagree with that. So like when an unbeliever states facts,

01:27:42

I believe those facts are genuine facts, and I believe that the unbeliever knows those facts. Yeah, but what

01:27:48

I'm saying, though, is why can't me and Tommy Aquinas, I'm gonna pretend

01:27:54

I know him, I'm gonna, why can't me and Tommy Aquinas, why can't we state a fact to non -believers?

01:28:02

If we agree it's a fact, why can't we state it to non -believers? You can state facts to unbelievers.

01:28:08

The presuppositional emphasis is that a fact, in order to be a fact, must have the

01:28:15

Christian worldview context. So I would say that unbelievers know facts, but if their presuppositions, their

01:28:23

God -denying presuppositions were true, they're not. But if they were, the fact that they think they know wouldn't be a fact.

01:28:31

Now, it is a fact, but it's because - I think we're quite, yeah, Geisler shows that Vantill and Aquinas say almost exactly the same thing at times, but Aquinas is speaking, at times,

01:28:50

Aquinas is speaking epistemologically, and Vantill is equating it as a metaphysical statement.

01:28:58

And I think that the image of God is modern, man, but I think the presuppositionalists act like natural revelation is special revelation.

01:29:09

No classical ecologist that I know of - Yeah, I'm not sure presuppositionalists would say that, though.

01:29:14

No, but they act like it. They act like nobody could really believe that God exists in their fallen state.

01:29:26

Well, there's lots of people who believe in the existence - Can you say that again? Yeah, they often act like nobody can believe that God exists.

01:29:34

They might say they believe, but they would say, well, false God, this or that, and I'd agree with them on that, but they act like they can't really know any truth unless they presuppose the

01:29:47

Christian worldview. Well, what I was saying, so a fact must be understood within a context, and so what we're saying is if you have the wrong context, then you don't have the proper interpretation of the fact.

01:30:01

Now, I believe they do have knowledge of the facts, but it's because they live inconsistently with their professed presuppositions.

01:30:07

Yeah, yeah, and I think that could be shown to them, but I think arguing only one way,

01:30:13

I don't think it's a one -way street. I think you can argue both ways, and I think, though, the image of God in man has been marred.

01:30:22

Because we're fallen, we could add one plus one and come up with three, but we could still add one plus one and come up with two, and I don't think priests often live like classical apologists,

01:30:34

I think, to a... I mean, if you ask a guy, how old is your mom? And he's an atheist, and he tells you his mom is 50, well, you know, you're not gonna say, wow, he doesn't presuppose

01:30:46

God's existence. Well, I mean, I mean, I wouldn't, and we'll,

01:30:53

I'll just make this point, because I don't wanna debate you on the, but just, I'm sure folks will find this interesting, this little back and forth, but sure, like when the unbeliever says my mom is 50 years old, like, no, like,

01:31:07

I'm not gonna question him on that, but when we're in an apologetic encounter, when this person is denying the

01:31:14

God whom the Bible says he has a sufficient knowledge of this God, then I'm going to say, okay, well, if you deny this

01:31:21

God, make sense out of facts without him. So I wouldn't stop him at every point and be like, well, how do you know your mother's, but if it's part of the encounter where this unbeliever is, you know, we're engaging in a conflict of perspectives, then yeah,

01:31:36

I'm gonna ask you, give an account for the things you take for granted. And I would argue, and I think you would probably agree with this.

01:31:42

Yeah, traditional apologists do that all the time. Right, but I think the key thing that differentiates presuppositionalism and say the more classical and evidential approaches is this issue of the assumption of the possibility of neutrality and autonomy with respect to understanding facts and the ability of the human mind's reasoning capacity.

01:32:07

So that when a classicalist says, I don't believe man's autonomous, cool, but we would say, but the way you present your arguments assumes that autonomy is the case and here's why.

01:32:17

And of course you have the debates. Yeah, and I don't, and I see the, just doing the

01:32:23

Antillian presuppositionalism, I see that as inconsistent with that statement.

01:32:28

I think it's either, when Van Til says my argument or the highway, and this is the one argument,

01:32:36

I agree with frame. All they gotta do is question one of your premises and now you're forced to use other arguments.

01:32:42

So it can't be the same argument, yeah. Okay, so we're gonna disagree there and that's completely fine.

01:32:50

But when you write that book, I would be more than happy to give it a read.

01:32:55

I do respect and appreciate what you have to say. So I would look forward to that.

01:33:00

So you keep me updated when it comes out, I totally will. Yeah, I definitely will. So someday maybe we'll get to get out to North Carolina and I'll be the guy who sits on your couch and won't leave.

01:33:16

That's no problem, man. I'm sure we would get along really well. Well, Phil, I greatly enjoyed this conversation and I hope that folks have been edified by it and just kind of been able to just be interested in hearing your story and the sorts of things that you do.

01:33:31

I kind of liked that segment where you were explaining the issue of like preparing for debates and things like that. I think folks really appreciate that sort of stuff.

01:33:38

So thank you so much for your time. I really do appreciate it. Oh, thank you. God bless you and God bless your family and your ministry.

01:33:44

Same to you, brother. Now, I'd like you to stay on. I'm just going to end the broadcast here. Guys, thank you so much for the questions.

01:33:50

Thank you for listening. And if you haven't subscribed to Revealed Apologetics, please do so. And most definitely check out

01:33:55

Dr. Phil Fernandez's books. If you just type in his name on Amazon, a bunch of books pop up.

01:34:01

I'm really interested in his outlines. He's got teaching outlines that he has in book form, which might be good for small groups or if you're going to teach a class or something like that.

01:34:11

So definitely check out his stuff and his website, which is I think philfernandez .org, am I correct?

01:34:17

Philfernandez .org and Fernandez ends with an S, not a Z. That's right. My bad. Everybody messes it as a

01:34:23

Z and they don't find me. So philfernandez .org and above my photo there,

01:34:29

I think there's a link. And you click on the link for sermon audio and it gives you access to over 1800 sermons and lectures.

01:34:37

And you can click on series and listen to entire courses. And I usually, if I give like a course on worldviews 2016,

01:34:46

I'll give, I'll write that in the title so people can see them or differentiate the more current stuff from the older stuff, so.

01:34:53

Right, right. And if folks wanted to, I know some people who watch my show also have their own

01:34:59

YouTube channels. If someone wanted to reach out to you and have you on their show, how might they reach out to you? Gee, they could call me.

01:35:08

Yeah, email would be fine. Okay. Phil Fernandez, again, Fernandez with an S. Phil Fernandez.

01:35:15

Oh no, wait, phil .fernandez at gatewaychristianschools .org.

01:35:22

I didn't make the email. Phil .fernandez at gatewaychristianschools .org.

01:35:30

Okay. Well, thank you so much. And thank you so much everyone for listening and thank you for your support as well.