Final Dan Barker Discussions Prior to Debate

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence
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Our host is dr. James White director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church This is a live program and we invite your participation if you'd like to talk with dr.
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White call now at 602 973 4602 or toll -free across the
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United States. It's 1 877 7 5 3 3 3 4 1 And now with today's topic here is
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James White And good morning Welcome to the dividing line on last dividing line prior to the debate at the
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University of Illinois coming up this Thursday evening I'm assuming it's 7 o 'clock. I'd be surprised for his any other time
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So I'm going on I sort of probably need to check that a little bit more closely. But anyway
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The information is on the website that of course is where my mind is. I am rushing about today
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Trying to get everything packed up and trying to get my presentations put together. I would like these to be good -looking presentations solid presentations
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This is not a subject that I have pre -existing presentations sitting around that I can draw from so I am
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Rushing around trying to put all that together. I have a feeling I will be sitting at the gate tomorrow Using up my battery power to be working on things as well
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I've got a fairly decent drive once I land to get to where I'm going and I've got a lunch meeting with some folks.
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So the day of the debate so only certain amount of time and I like being done Early, that's always good for me
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Of course, I don't know if I mentioned this but I had a next to a disastrous thing happen right before the ermine debate
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It was it was just great I'm sitting there. I'm down there early like I always am talking with folks, you know
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And all of a sudden I look around and I left my timers in my room
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Which was a long ways away and it's not long before the debates I'm heading up there and you know what happens
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I get to my door and you know, what happens those cards they get demagnetized So I am way far away from the front desk and I can't get into my room to get him
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So I've got to go rushing back downstairs run up to the the thing get my card Remagnetized run it through the thing run back up there.
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I got there with like two minutes to spare. I think Michael Fallon was wondering what on earth is going on here, but we still get started on time, but that's just not like me
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I like getting there early have everything set up. That's just you know, I'm early for dental appointments and everything else
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That's just how I am. So Anyhow, hopefully we'll get all that stuff done. I'm really excited about the debate.
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I Had not found earlier in an internet archive and so I've cranked out almost 70 miles the past two days so I could get them
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Listened to and they were both very very interesting
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One I had heard Dan talking about in a lot of his other debates and his other lectures
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And it was the debate that took place sometime around 2002 2003 with an
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Islamic apologist And so I had double interest in hearing that obviously and we're gonna have a
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Muslim moderator For the debate at the University of Illinois as well So I plan on trying to make some application there as well to illustrate a few things especially how you would
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How the debate would be different if it was an Islamic Christian debate over against this illustrating the role of world views but anyway
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So I got a chance to listen to that particular encounter while I was riding this morning and I wanted to play one clip from that.
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I got it queued up just a few moments ago I've like I said, I'm moving at warp speed today or as warp speed as my
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Old PC here will allow me to move. Sometimes it loads up certain files. It's like I'll be done in about eight minutes
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Thank you. Don't rush me. You can't do that. So got this queued up. I want you to hear
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This particular statement because so often you you struggle in talking with atheists to get past their
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Their wishy -washy atheism isn't a belief thing, you know, and well, we're not really saying
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God doesn't exist It's like a belief in God la la la la That's not going to be necessary when
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I have this kind of citation from Dan Barker ready to play
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However when it comes to a particular definition of God such as the Christian God or the
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Islamic God I Go further than just the negative soft lowercase atheism and I make the positive claim that that particular
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God Does not exist in that case. I am an uppercase atheist
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Especially when it comes to the gods of the revealed religions I am convinced and I claim to know that those gods the
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Christian God Allah Does not exist. It's not a belief. It is a claim of knowledge
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It is not a belief. It is a claim of Knowledge. He is a capital a hard atheist when it comes to the revealed religions
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Jehovah Allah they do not exist period end of discussion and so, of course being a rigorous
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Fundamentalistic naturalistic materialist absolutely rejecting the existence of anything beyond the natural realm
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Demanding you provide proof only from the natural realm for that which is supposed to be beyond the natural realm One of the issues we're gonna have to discuss
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These You know falling into that epistemological camp To make that kind of a claim is is a pretty amazing thing and it's interesting.
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How does he do this? he's not going to be able to object to my providing an internal critique of his position as Evidence of my own because that's how he makes his argument
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Think about the list of alleged contradictions that we've been looking at from the Kyle Butts debate from just a few months ago
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How did he demonstrate that the Christian God does not exist by going to the Bible Isag eating certain passages ignoring context language and just general fairness
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But coming up with these rather surface -level contradictions saying the Christian God Therefore does not exist if the
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Bible says that he's good And then the Bible says that he has does terrible things.
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Therefore the Christian God does not exist So he's trying to provide an internal critique not going to have much of a basis for complaining
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If I do the same thing, but only do it fairly and properly and soundly and so on so forth So it's important to recognize that Mr.
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Barker is emphasizing. He is making the statement. It is a element of knowledge
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That the Christian God does not exist from his perspective now before I go back to The Contradiction stuff.
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I also want to play another section You're gonna have to crank the volume on this rich because this is really really low and much much lower than the clip
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I was just playing Yesterday I listened to a debate on intelligent design that mr.
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Barker did and it was rather frustrating because I do not get the feeling that well, it was frustrating because the person he was debating a number of times just Had a softball thrown at him and just swung and missed just just big -time and that's that's always difficult to watch or listen to But mainly just the the the fundamentalist level of mr.
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Barker's materialism Just kept coming out over and over and over again, and I just have not heard him deal meaningfully when
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I hear him trying to parallel the Irreducible complexity of biological systems that that carry information
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The the DNA system. I just downloaded a video just incredible what you can do today a video on the production of ATP from a
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ADP Cellular respiration it something I had to learn back when I was in college.
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I was biology major but now It's it's even more wondrous because we can create these 3d models of how this works and you have this this machine sitting there that brings in protons and the protons come in one way and they cause the thing to spin on a shaft and that shaft then turns
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The shaft goes down into another structure that turns and In that structure you have various proteins that have to be shaped absolutely perfectly so that they move in and out from each other just perfectly and as it turns it moves these and Brings in ADP and produces
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ATP and kicks it out and it can even go in reverse When the need is there and that's happening in your cells all the time
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It makes it's as it's as complex as what's going on in any
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Hydroelectric plant producing electricity in those big turbines, you know that are going through except this can this can
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Automatically detect when it needs to reverse itself. I mean it's incredible and To look at that and go wow, it's amazing how stuff just sort of flawless together like that It just leaves me stuttering as to how man can be so Self -blinded you have to be sitting there sticking pins in your eyes to not see how obvious Design is here
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Intelligent purposeful design. It's right there and I've not heard any any challenges along those lines and I'm You well, you'll see anyway,
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I wanted to listen to this and we're getting some phone calls But I want to listen to one particular part of this exchange it's very very interesting as they're going back and forth because you see
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I have I have determined and detected that Dan is While he will you know, he obviously holds to neodymium micromutational evolutionary theory as to how mankind
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Came to be mankind now. So the problem is Dan appreciates beauty in the world way too much for an evolutionist
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He plays jazz piano he plays chess he he he sees beauty in the world and So he just can't stay there.
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He can't stay in the law of tooth and fang and so Like others he's starting to develop this idea that well, okay.
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Yeah That kind of natural selection is how we got to a certain point
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But then once our brains got big enough everything changed and you see what we need to do is we need to evolve beyond evolution we need to go beyond this he's an inconsistent
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Darwinian and That's going to come up too as well. I assure you but here's here's that comes out.
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Listen to This a couple of minutes of exchange from this debate on intelligent design
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Process of natural selection. We all have these canine teeth here That were designed by natural selection to tear apart flesh to tear and to kill animals
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We all have violence within our history I think I'm a pretty peaceable guy, but I suppose any one of us have pressed hard enough that would come out, right?
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But we have since evolved a higher cranium a frontal lobe The frontal lobe of your brain is what's keeping you from burping out loud during this meeting tonight, you know
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It's the part of you that's controlling The lower what we sometimes call the animal instincts so we are at the level now in our development where we can ask questions about morality a
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Secular humanist like myself and my family Says that any person can be called ethical or moral who intends to act in ways that minimize harm so ethics and morality are actually somewhat
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Anti -evolutionary because if you were just to go back to pure animal instincts and not have this higher brain that's able to think and reason
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Then we wouldn't even have a concept of ethics and morality. We would just all be survival of the fittest and I would kill you
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And hurt you and you know what I mean, but we're not we now have this brain we now have this intelligence
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We now have a higher level than some of the other mammals because of the increased complexity of this brain that we can start framing questions about reality in in ethical terms, so You know
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It's a bell curve most of us fall in the middle of the curve over here on this edge are the psychopaths the sociopaths the people who are mentally unhealthy that we put in jails and I think they're beyond hope.
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I know there's nothing you can do. I mean, they're they're sick The brain is gone in some way Over here are people who are somewhat more criminal and in the middle are you and I most of us and over here are the
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People that we call what the Saints or the whatever the people that and we all we all fall within that in some way but since Education tries to teach all of us to treat each other with respect and fairness so we can all get along We're social animals after all then we just use a very simple principle a rational kind principle
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That says if you truly intend to act in ways that minimize harm, you can't eliminate harm sometimes you have to cause harm to minimize harm, but if you're acting in ways that Truly trying to minimize harm in the world
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Then you are called an ethical person and certainly my wife was a third -generation atheist and my daughter whose fourth
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Generation are stellar examples of good moral intelligent kind people They were never raised on religion or Jesus or the
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Bible or Genesis 1 and 2 Millions of good Americans millions of people on this planet live very good lives probably better lives than the average believer if you trust
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George Barnes studies Born -again Christians have a higher divorce rate than atheists. They commit more crimes.
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They contribute less to charity They watch just as many x -rated movies. They take just as many drugs for depression and morally
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Believers in God or Christianity have no edge in the real world. I used to preach that there was an edge there
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Morality basically boils down to Us trying to get along as social animals in the real world using the tools of reason and of kindness earlier,
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I pointed out that the church has a higher accountability for being faithful to the good order of creation a
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Darwinist a Darwinist has no such accountability to the struggle of Survival and notice what
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Dan just said. He said natural selection is quote a vicious horrible process Now is that beautiful and He said intrinsically that as its definition because it is a survival of fittest
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And so the person who may be pathologically at the fire of the bell curve Maybe they're just closer to evolutionary process and this is the problem th
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Huxley faced in 1893 Was he wanted to evolve above that? Well, that's quite a statement of faith that we've evolved to a higher form
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Now the 20th century was the most blood -letting century in all of human history and in fact
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If you look at the sociology of Darwinism and and Nietzsche to Spencer on forward and you read
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Mary Pride's book the proud tower what it was from the early 1880s to 1914 was one long call for war in Europe and science incarnate and Darwinian survival of fittest were exactly the same clauses in that mindset the
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German Kaiser on Outward the first right the second right the third right and so the evidence is quite contrary there's no evolution to a higher form whatsoever that comes out of Survival of fittest and and final response to that good observation is the survival of the fittest is might makes right
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It's the justification for tyranny and the only reason that people don't do it is because the image of God is more powerful yet And the image of God wants to love our neighbors as ourselves and take care of the weak
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Darwinian evolution cannot explain the concept of mercy Now Dan goes on to assert that oh, yes, yes, it can because there is this this attempt now on the part of a number of writers to try to explain naturalistically every aspect of human existence and it is obvious that care for the sick care for the the young etc is a part of human nature and You can't explain that on micromutational neo -darwinian
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Principles and so they're trying to come up with ideas that well You know once you have the bigger frontal lobe once you have community then all this changes now of course
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One might then ask a simple question What if you have a person? who believes in Darwinian evolution and believes that the greatest good is the propagation of his genotype into the next generation in the largest way possible and if that's the ultimate good then then rape and murder and pillage is absolutely fine
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The eugenics of the Nazis and things that absolutely fine now
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Dan could sit there and say oh, I think that's terrible Morality by definition is doing the least harm now.
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That's his definition So inside the the bony cavern that is the head of Dan Barker you have certain chemical reactions going on the the the sodium -potassium pump is is is is active in certain phospholipid layers resulting in certain electrical stimuli so that you can have certain neurons firing and so they get together in a certain way that says
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I Define morality as not doing any harm The other guy who wants to spread his genotype far and wide could care less about that walks up blows your brains out and there's
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Nothing wrong with that because he has now in his worldview made the human race better because it's just his genotype that is going to be passed on to the next generation and He cannot say that's wrong
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He can say well, we can all get together and we can pass laws that say that people like that are bad Well, that's nice and wonderful, but that's not announcing anything other than you don't really have a moral foundation for anything other than just what's between your two ears and that is the case, but isn't it fascinating to hear a naturalistic materialist a fundamentalist naturalistic materialist saying that we need to evolve beyond Evolution we need to evolve beyond Tooth and claw well
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Maybe the reality is that that's not how we got there in the first place and that that guilt that has been shown
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By mankind for as long as we know mankind as mankind Reflects the fact that he was created in the image of God and that the
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Direction that he has been going ever since then has not been upward It has been downward away from that high calling
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I think that explains things a whole lot better eight seven seven seven five three three three four one is the phone number
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Let's take some phone calls and let's talk with rich in Rhode Island. Hi Rich Doing good
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Yes Yes This past weekend we hosted our annual gathering for our state and our executive minister decided to have
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Bart Campolo Come and speak who at our church Bart Campolo Tony Campolo's son.
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Oh, I didn't know that Tony Campolo had a son named Bart. So that's news to me. He's a hardcore straightedge
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Universalist as you like to describe himself. Oh He has a website he has a mission thing that he does in Walnut Hill and Why would a universalist do missions work?
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Through a friend who has a family relation to him. I ended up spending about an hour and 15 minutes with him
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Saturday night afterwards and And Getting verbally beat up a little bit from my Calvinistic God and all that sort of stuff
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So I really your sermon they posted from Sunday.
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It was really really timely and and I really Appreciate that the one on God's judgment or the one on first Corinthians.
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Um the one on the Basically, it was the one you just put up last night.
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I Posted I posted two of them. I put one on the blog Was it evil?
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Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, I dealt with yeah, okay, it was the Sunday morning one, okay, okay
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But yeah, yeah He was just he said that basically the way
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I was saying it was well Then faith is just like a t -shirt that God's giving out and different colors and based on the color that he gives you it's whether you get admission or not and he tried to You know go into saying that how could
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I believe that Gandhi could ever be in hell And if God is someone that's gonna assign
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Gandhi to hell, then he wants to go just let him go as well Oh, I think that that's exactly where he's headed
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And there and you know, Dan Barker does the same thing You know if God could create a hell that I'm gonna be a moral enough creature stand up to him and tell him that he
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Should go there himself and I'm gonna go there gladly because I don't want to be with a god like that blah blah blah blah and yeah, you know once you turn
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God into just a big a big creature and you've never experienced what
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Job Job experienced when he had his interview with God and What did what did
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Job do? He laid his hand upon his mouth When you've never had the experience that Isaiah had to see the holiness of God and he recognizes his own sin
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When you have a very low view of God, it's real easy to have a very high view of man So that's that's not too unusual
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He said I had a I guess because I hold to the inspiration of all scripture you saying
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I have an unhealthy view of scripture Oh, well, that's he can himself a red -letter
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Christian Only the red only the red letters that are loving God like not where He's a modern
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Martian. He chops the Bible up according to his predilections that's nothing new about that Thomas Jefferson did the same thing that heresy has been around for a long time and now has
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Tony Campolo made any public statements about the fact that his son is a raving heretic
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Well, I guess Christianity Today had done a an article a couple years back. I was like 2006.
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I think that Mr. Campola was I mean that Bart Campola was a heretic and He responded on his web page never but when
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I found out that he was coming I didn't really know who he was and I went through and I just started doing his readings
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And I ended up forcing a vote at Because there was a question of whether he'd come talk on Sunday and I didn't
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I couldn't bear that and I said this can't happen Well, why would anybody want him to come talk?
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Anyways, they were looking for a different perspective Because of because of his mission because he is in there helping the poor on the front line in the slums of Cincinnati You know, we're supposed to be out there, you know doing the work of Christ and I and I agree that we should be out there
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You know helping people in their physical needs and in their spiritual needs But you know, you can't separate the two and it seems like you you fall off the ditch either side.
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It's a bad thing Wow, okay. Well, I think that's where they were. They were trying to bring a different perspective and I was like this is too different Yeah, let's
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Let's let's just why don't we have the Mormons come in and the Buddhists come in and well
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I guess that's what happens in a lot of churches today. So yeah Well, that's interesting Rich. I didn't know anything about Bart Campolo, but now we've now we've heard about him.
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Yeah. All righty. Well, thank you, sir. Thank you. Thanks for coming Alright, let's go to Gideon in New York.
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Hi Gideon It's going pretty good Last week we're describing
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Dan Barker's views. It's out of a pure functionalist. I think he's like a naturalist or something Well a naturalist materialist in in his worldview and a functionalist in how he explains
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For example how the laws of logic he does not believe the laws of logic exist They are functions of the human brain and they have no existence outside of that.
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They are not A Universal abstract entities that are reflective of a created order
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They're just simply how our minds interact with the world around us. And so that's what I meant by a
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Functionalist that's how he explains the existence of the law of non -contradiction or something like that and then as a natural materialist
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I was wondering I was noticing that there's a big view because If for instance the laws of logic are fully contingent upon whether or not our brains are functioning
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Or if our brains are not dormant then on that view of looking at things wouldn't that mean that God exists half the time because when he goes to sleep the law of Non -contradiction is suspended and God pops back into existence since there are no more contradictions in the
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Bible. Yeah. Well, you know, I One of the points I'm going to make is that From that perspective when when
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Dan Barker goes to sleep Then you can have square circles and He and and once he's asleep
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There is no basis for accusing the Bible contradiction or things like that And and of course once he dies then then that's all over with as well.
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So it is an amazingly Shall we say shallow?
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perspective to hold but He he presents it with the fervor of his former fundamentalist days of preaching
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Well, you're right, but you're quite correct that that does When when you limit those things to mere chemical reactions or as Doug Wilson put it atoms banging around against each other inside someone's cranium it there again,
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I think most well, I think everyone if By the grace of God, they're not suppressing the knowledge of God recognizes the foolishness of such thinking but That's what happens when you try to suppress the knowledge of God is it results in that kind of foolishness
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Right. I think it was deep British evolutionist DBS called Dane that said if my thought processes are determined only by the motions of atoms in my brain
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Then I have no reason for supposing any of my beliefs were true and hence I have no reason for supposing there are atoms in my brain. That's true yeah, and I've heard that quotation and yet people don't see the circularity of their their thought process at that point and You know, you have to feel for the naturalistic materialist
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It's a it's a pretty it's a real bummer world If it's really the way things are and Dan's willing to embrace that he that part of his his presentation is yeah
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We are cosmic broccoli On the cosmic on the cosmic level. There's no difference between us and broccoli.
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We're cosmic broccoli. There's no cosmic meaning There's no transcendent meaning when you're dead. You're dead. That's it.
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That's there's there's no No transcendent purpose or any of those things he says what if it is that way
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Are you just afraid to live in a world like that? and You know, there is a part
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I think of us that naturally recoils against that and it's not just because of our quote -unquote upbringing either so Anyway, but yeah, he does like to use that that that presentation.
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All right Okay. Thanks Gideon. All right eight seven seven
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Seven five three three three four one is the phone number We're gonna be taking our break here in a moment and then coming back finally getting back after all this time
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To that list of alleged contradictions that Dan uses to say the Christian God does not exist and we'll continue with that.
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Hello everyone. This is Rich Pierce In a day and age where the gospel is being twisted into a man -centered self -help program
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The need for a no -nonsense presentation of the gospel has never been greater I am convinced that a great many go to church every
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Sunday yet. They have never been confronted with their sin Alpha -Omega ministries is dedicated to presenting the gospel in a clear and concise manner making no excuses
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Man is sinful and God is holy That sinful man is in need of a perfect Savior and Jesus Christ is that perfect Savior?
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We are to come before the Holy God with an empty hand of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ Alpha and Omega takes that message to every group that we deal with while equipping the body of Christ as well
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Support Alpha Omega ministries and help us to reach even more with the pure message of God's glorious grace.
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Thank you And welcome back to the vying line after our little break there
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Let's get at least a couple of more of these alleged contradictions in I Of course what is the needed?
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foundation to make that work, and that is the assertion that when God does the things he's described as doing in Barara, we looked at Isaiah 45 before, in another context response
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Dan Barker, that somehow makes him evil. Dan doesn't explain why that is. He doesn't explain that the fact that from the biblical perspective what
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God does is just and righteous because God does it. He just simply judges from a human perspective and makes assumptions and creates a false contradiction as a result.
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Doesn't quite work. You know we already did that one, didn't we?
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I know we did that one. I thought I had written down the the thing here, and boy we have a really really loud noisy line on this computer anymore.
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There we go. We were at the slavery one. I'm not sure how I missed that.
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My apology. You know when you've listened to, I don't know how many of Dan Barker's, how many hours of Dan Barker's stuff
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I've listened to over the past month and a half or so since this was arranged, it's hard to remember exactly where you were at certain points, but you don't get it typed out right now.
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Yes, the Bible is a pro -slavery book of the shoulder of the stranger that sojourned among you. You shall buy them, and they shall be your possession, and they shall be your bondsmen forever.
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I just want to stop right there and just make a comment. The Bible's a pro -slavery book. You know, you can get away with this kind of stuff because, let's face it, if the political situation in our land has not illustrated this, people just don't think very clearly anymore.
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Rhetoric is more than enough to befuddle the average American mind, and basically the average
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Western mind. We have been taught what to think, not how to think, and as a result, well, it's messy.
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And so he talks about a pro -slavery book. So what he does is he speaks post -slavery in the
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United States and knows his audience is going to assume it that way. They're not going to realize that in the ancient world, this wasn't even an argument.
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There wasn't pro -slavery, anti -slavery. Slavery was the reality of the economic system, just as the vast majority of nations were not democratic republics or anything like that, like ours is not any longer anyways.
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But they were mainly despotic monarchies and empires and so on and so forth.
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And so instead of dealing with it in a meaningful fashion, where you deal with it in its context and the fact that the
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Bible recognizes slavery, it places bounds upon slavery, it places limitations upon slavery, rather than going, that's pretty amazing that this book and these people had these really unusual and humane limitations, so much so that it even has to discuss what you do with slaves who want to remain in the household.
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We see these odd situations where people who are called servants or slaves of great men want to stay there.
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They are willing to fight and die, not just because somebody puts a sword to their back, but because they love this person, they are part of the household.
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This is weird, we can't understand this because we only have one unbiblical view of slavery.
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Slavery was a means by which people could stay alive in an economy that did not have any safety nets.
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And to fail to recognize these things, and to fail to, well Jesus never called for an uprising of the slaves, as I said before, what you're saying there is, for Christianity to be true, it had to have been a revolutionary religion in every land in which it was proclaimed for the first, how many, hundreds of years of its existence.
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And they get away with this because they know that their audience, well they themselves are probably ignorant to half that stuff, but they get away with it because they know their audiences are not going to have any type of historical grounding upon which to think these things through and to be fair and reading it and all the rest of that stuff, but that's why they get away with it.
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And it's a shame that it happens, but that's just the way it is. But we continue with this assertion. However, you find all sorts of pro -slavery books in the
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Bible. You can sell your sons and daughters into the hands of the children, and so on. Even Jesus said that some slaves ought not to be as hard as other slaves, he was that compassionate.
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And slaves obey in all things their masters, it says in Colossians. However... Now, again, we don't like any of that because, well, we have employment.
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Well, the application today would be between employees and employers. But it's meant to just simply use an emotional word to shut down all critical thought.
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And that's what he's doing here, and I'm sure it's highly effective for those who don't think clearly.
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But for those who do, it really reflects badly upon the person using the argument. Isaiah said, undo the heavy burdens, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke.
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Needed be called masters, for one is your master, even Christ. The God of the Bible is pro -slavery, the
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God of the Bible is anti -slavery. He does not exist. Now, that was a really pathetic attempt to create a contradiction.
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Again, as long as context means nothing and you can just simply slice and dice any way you want, anybody could take everything that Dan's written and turn it into foolish contradiction as well.
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But that was a particularly bad attempt to create a contradiction. In Romans 15 .33,
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we find out that he's called the God of peace. In Exodus 15 .3,
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the Lord is a man of war. In the Old Testament, he's a war god, and you can see his actions.
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He's a hateful, vicious, tyrannical, brutal, discriminatory war god.
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The God of the Bible is the God of peace. The God of the Bible is the God of war. He does not exist.
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Again, another pathetic attempt because you take titles and you don't look at what they're supposed to mean, and then attempt to create such a surface -level contradiction between the two as if, well, if you're the
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God of peace, that means that you could never book the existence of war. There are peaceful men.
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And we know this. Let's just take it out of the Bible for a second. There are peaceful men who, for what is right, will go to war.
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We all know that. That's just a given. It's such simplicity. And see, what makes it reprehensible is that Dan's an intelligent man.
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He doesn't read anything else this way. So there's got to be a level of dishonesty being involved in this.
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It's just ridiculous. It's beyond the pale. What about his son? Jesus said,
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Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. And when he was born, on earth peace and goodwill toward men.
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However, Jesus himself said, Think not that I have come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace but a sword.
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He said to his disciples, If you don't have a sword, sell your garment and buy one. The God of the
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Bible is peaceful. He does not exist. Again, this kind of simplistic argumentation,
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I don't think we're going to hear it Thursday night. At least I hope not, because this is supposed to be a university setting.
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And I think he changed this because I think it was in a Church of Christ type thing. And he realized that that was the context he was in.
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And so let's use this kind of silly interpretation where we absolutely insist that we can talk about Jesus bringing peace to those who, of course, in repentance and faith are in right relationship to God.
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But that that brings the sword to the family for those who are unwilling to do so. All you have to do is go one level of meaning, obvious meaning, past the surface level of the text and these alleged contradictions evaporate.
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And so to declare that God doesn't exist based upon Dan Barker's fundamentalistic simplistic reading of the text.
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Well, again, the very fact you'd make that kind of argumentation, and I don't care what context it is.
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The very fact you'd ever make that kind of argumentation when you know how silly it is actually speaks to the issue of morality and the fact that Dan Barker's definition of morality is way too simplistic to actually deal with the reality of moral decisions that we have to make today or that mankind has always had to make.
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Just simply avoiding harm is not enough to deal with such things as ought and duty and things like that, guilt and other related issues.
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Jesus said, though I bear record of myself, my record is true. He had a few verses earlier.
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He said, if I bear record of myself, my record is not true. He contradicted himself.
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The God of the Bible's witness is true. The God of the Bible's witness is not true. He's a merry bastard.
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He does not exist. And we've dealt with that one in the Wilson debate. Doug Wilson took him to school on that one, and yet this is years later and he's still repeating it.
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When you keep repeating an alleged allegation of falsehood where you have been thoroughly embarrassed in public, that indicates that you don't hear and that you are not concerned about the truthfulness of what you're saying.
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You're concerned about the utilitarian benefit of what you're saying for the promotion of your position.
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And anyone who reads Jesus's words and ignores the first context, speaking of bringing in the witness of the father as the second witness along with him, and then the second context being that since he knows where he is from, referring to his divine nature, that means that his witness would be true simply because of who he is.
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To ignore those two things and to allow the writer to not make that kind of assertion in the gospel text is, again, simplistic and silly.
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We're not given any meaningful exegesis of either text, context thrown out the window, and yet Dan just keeps repeating these things over and over again.
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That repetition, I think, speaks volumes. Let's see if there's any more here. John 1 .18 says,
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No man has seen God at any time. Can God be seen? No.
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Exodus 33, Thou canst not see my face, for no man shall see me and live, and on and on.
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No man has seen God at any time. However, in Genesis 32, for I have seen
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God face to face. Exodus 33 .11, and the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, and a man speaks unto his friend.
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The God of the Bible cannot be seen. The God of the Bible can be seen. He does not exist.
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Now, of course, we have raised that issue. We've had that issue raised to us even by more missionaries over the years, and so we've dealt with those issues.
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And it's funny, here's a man who will frequently – I've never heard him expand upon this. I would love for him to do so because the thesis of our debate is the triune
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God of Scripture lives. If he's wise, he won't, but he loves to make assertions that there's very good reason for not believing in the doctrine of the
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Trinity based upon the Bible. If he's wise, he won't go there, but then again, he might.
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Who knows? But we have utilized these very texts to demonstrate the
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Trinitarian teaching of the New Testament, of the Bible as a whole. Because the one who is seen, who does – in John 12, verses 39 -41,
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John tells us the one who is seen by Isaiah sitting upon his throne was, in fact, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one.
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John 1 .18, the text he quoted only a part of. He only quoted a part of it. And he probably didn't even see the meaning of this because even though he claims to have translated major portions of the
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New Testament, I see no reason to believe that. And he generally uses the King James. And so the
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King James would say no man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. But the better reading of John 1 .18
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is magnes theos, the unique God has made him known. So he wouldn't even recognize that John 1 .18
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is telling us that the one who has been seen, the one who exegetes, makes known the
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Father, is the Son. And so there is a Trinitarian response to those particular passages.
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But he doesn't even raise it because it's very, very doubtful in light of his own self -description of his theological education as basically glorified
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Sunday school. That those were not issues that he ever dealt with when he was a quote -unquote
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Christian. Is he powerful? Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh, in Jeremiah 32.
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Is there anything too hard for me? Jesus said, with God, all things are possible.
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And yet in Judges 1 .19, read this. The Lord was with Judah. He drove out the inhabitants of the mountain, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley.
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Why? Because they had chariots of iron. God is all -powerful?
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God cannot even fight chariots of iron. God does not exist. Judges 1 .19
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says, Now the Lord was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country, but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had iron chariots.
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He assumes that the antecedent to could not drive out is
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Yahweh rather than Judah. And so Yahweh couldn't drive them out because they had iron chariots.
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But actually it was the people that couldn't. At that time, they did at a later time. But he wants to make the assertion that God is powerful, but God isn't powerful based upon that.
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A part of me actually hopes that he might throw something like that out. Because it's just like, wow.
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Okay, I want to get this on tape again and actually have an opportunity to respond to it and invite people.
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Look these things up. Look it up for yourself and really ask yourself, is that really what the author of Judges was?
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God was out there and they just kept running God over in their iron chariots. Does God live in light or does
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God live in darkness? 1 Timothy 6, the king of kings, lord of lords, dwelling in the light which no man can approach.
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James 1 .17, he's the father of light. And on and on we see God as light. There's no darkness in him at all.
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However, in 1 Kings 8, he then spake Solomon. The Lord said that he would dwell in the thick darkness.
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1 Samuel 22, he made darkness, pavilions around about him, dark water and thick clouds in the sky.
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Psalm 18 .11, he made darkness his secret place. So, God lives in light,
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God lives in darkness. Does he accept human sacrifice? And some verses and others.
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That went into a second one. I was supposed to stop there and then we need to take our phone call. But does God dwell in light or does
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God dwell in darkness? There's contradiction right there. It's funny.
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When we try to allow all the scripture to speak, then he says, no, you can't do it.
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You're just trying to harmonize things. But he can pull from whatever context he wants. And so when you're talking about God's existence in and of himself, in his own being, and then when you talk about the fact that mankind is not able to see
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God or that God is pictured poetically and coming upon the dark clouds of judgment and things like that, then you can just throw those two things together and create contradiction.
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It's like, okay, all right. This kind of eisegesis, this kind of manhandling of the text might have an impact upon simplistic
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Christians who know nothing about how to handle the word of God. They know nothing about meaningful rules of exegesis, hermeneutics and things like that.
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And let's face it, that's what makes it effective is we don't spend a lot of time teaching our people those things and modeling how to do it in most churches.
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I would like to think that we try to do so appropriately in our church. But that's why they get away with this kind of extremely bad simplistic argumentation that for the educated
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Christian, you just go, man, if this is what they've got out there, they don't have much to offer.
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So anyhow, there's a whole list of those. And of course, we're not going to be here on Thursday because that's when the debate is taking place.
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Real quickly before the phone call here, we're going to do our best to make this available.
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We don't know whether it's going to work or not. We don't know if the people are going to be able to get there in time to make it work. We're going to try, though.
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And so keep an eye on the blog. And if worst comes to worst, hit this.
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You going to tell us something here, Mr. Pierce? I just received an email from the organizer, and the debate definitely starts at 7 p .m.
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And apparently they've just put up a Facebook event advertising it. And so we'll get the link on our website finally tied to that.
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Christians don't link to Facebook. Say that again. Christians don't link to Facebook.
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I was just reading what she's got there, okay? Just passing the message along.
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And you packed up your phones. That's why you can't hear me. So it's okay. Well, I had to turn the studio speakers down in here because they have a little bit of an echo here.
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I understand that. Thank you very much. Okay, we're going to continue on now. Thank you. Anyway, we're going to do our best.
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And if worst comes to worst, just hit the link you're listening to now if you're listening live that evening, say, 630 or so and 645.
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Get yourself a place. We'll see if we can do it. If we can't, we apologize, but we're going to try. We'll see what happens.
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We'll see what happens. Real quickly, let's talk with Johnny in California. Hi, Johnny. How are you doing, James? Doing pretty good.
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Good. The reason I was calling you is because I met up with a couple more missionaries and knocked on my door last
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Saturday, and I decided to try to question the issue of the priesthood because they feel that the church has to function with the
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Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods and all that stuff. And as we started talking about them, obviously the subject of revelation came up, and they were telling me that I had to pray about the
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Book of Mormon. And I told them that I had prayed about the Book of Mormon, and I didn't get the response that they had hoped for.
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And I told them that, you know, but given all of that, the Scripture does tell us that we are to test all revelations, you know, 1
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John 4 -1, et cetera. And one of the things that came up is that when I talked to them about that,
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I told them that there are all these groups. You know, you can look at Charismatics who have a lot of very experiential
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Christianity, some of which even go as far as saying that they can hear God audibly. You know,
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I mentioned all the other Mormon groups that claim to have revelation, claim to have apostles, and all these different things, and so I asked them, you know, how could
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I differentiate from your standpoint, your methodology, what comes from God? And as I pointed that out to them, they just said, you just have to pray about it.
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For years I've been trying to find a way around it other than quoting Scripture and using common sense.
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I'm hoping you can, if you have a way to get around that. Well, there's a whole chapter in Letters to a
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Mormon Elder in dealing with the LDS testimony, and you have to establish the reality of objective revelation right at the start, and that's why
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I do go to Scripture, and I do give examples of those who function on a different basis than just simply praying about it and getting an emotional feeling.
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Obviously, the various texts, the Bereans search Scriptures daily, and warnings about the nature of man, the fact that he who falls on hard is a fool, and trusting in the
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Word of God rather than our feelings and things like that, and then I like to use examples. I frequently, if I'm in a conversation with a group of Mormons, will split them up, and I'll say, now let's say this gentleman here, and I'll turn to one of the
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Mormons, normally the more quiet missionary, I'll turn the quiet missionary into a
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Jehovah's Witness. I'll say, let's say this fellow here was one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and he is out here distributing his literature.
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I've actually had Jehovah's Witnesses show up, so sometimes I've been able to use that too. But I'll say, now this fellow doesn't just go on a mission for two years, he's been going door -to -door for 25 years, and he's prayed, and he's sincere, and he reads the
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Bible, and he insists that Jesus is Michael the Archangel, and he gives us his testimony that he knows that this is true, and I give my testimony to you that I know that's not true, and you join with me,
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Mr. Mormon, in saying that Jesus is not Michael the Archangel. So how do we know?
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Are you saying he's insincere? He says he's received a testimony. There has to be some objective mechanism whereby we can determine these things, and when we look at how
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Jesus handled these things, when we look at how the apostles handled these things, they told us to examine all things, hold fast to that which is good, but what was the basis of that examination?
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That basis was an objective revelation, something we all shared, and that was the Word of God. Now, unfortunately, you add to the
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Word of God, and you have to, because the teachings of your church are not the teachings of what the
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Word of God says, and he does the same thing, not by adding extra books of Scripture, but by adding an infallible interpreter that cannot be questioned in the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses, and so both of you, in essence, violate that objective standard that God has given to us in his
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Word, but you have to establish those things right off the bat, because, especially with Mormons, any discussion you have will eventually devolve down to my testimony versus your testimony.
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That's what they want to get it to, so that you cannot make an objective objection to their theology, and that's what really,
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I think, has opened the door to the flood of postmodernism into Mormonism. It did not have any means of, you know, the submarine has always had a screen door, and now that the flood of postmodernism is all around the submarine, the submarine's sinking, and that's why they're having the problems they're having in maintaining any kind of meaningful self -definition of their religion, and that's why their numbers are soft, their growth is soft, their growth is pretty much natural, and even though they're up to 13 million, it's primarily natural growth, it's not the convert growth that it was for a long, long time.
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So hopefully that's helpful to you. Johnny, thank you for your call today. Thank you for listening to The Dividing Line. Remember, Thursday evening, we're going to do our best to broadcast the debate, but if we can't, no matter what the situation is, please pray as we seek to get it recorded, as we seek to defend
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God's truth and benefit God's people. Support us, pray for us. We'll see you next week on Tuesday.
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God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602, or write us at P .O.
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World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.