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Megachurch Pastor "Debunks Atheism" with Misinformation (Frank Turek/Josh Howerton response)
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Pastor Josh Howerton and apologist Frank Turek met to discuss some of the biggest questions about Christianity. They decided that God's truth just wasn't enough for their liking.
original video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2o2uQzZY_k
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If you do not believe in a creator, then you can't trust anyone's mind because all your mind is this the collision of atoms in a closed system.
SPEAKER_11That's right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So every thought you have isn't an actual thought. It's just that's how the atoms in your brain happen to collide.
SPEAKER_12Well, thank goodness the brains of Frank and Josh were made by God. So we can fully trust their thoughts and expressions.
SPEAKER_02There's only two possibilities. We're either God imagers, we're made in the image of God, or we're clever, murderous monkeys fighting for supply, fighting for control over the banana supply. That's it. That's it. It's one of those two, right?
SPEAKER_12That sounds like a false dichotomy coming from your God-designed mind. Maybe we can't trust it after all. And stay away from my bananas. What are atheists gonna say? You're gonna die, become worm food one day. Have a nice day. That is what we would say, since we value hard truths over comforting lies. The have a nice day would be very sincere, though.
SPEAKER_10Have a nice day.
SPEAKER_12Welcome to Paul Gia, where a former Christian takes a look at the claims of Christians. I came to know of multi-site megachurch Lake Point and its fast-rising media savvy conservative evangelical pastor Josh Howerton during our coverage of Kirk Cameron's Hellgate. With nearly two million subscribers, I've been keeping a bit of an eye on his near stereotype, bold cultural clarity styling, and over-political messaging.
SPEAKER_03When Christians do not vote, what they're doing is they're abdicating their leadership position in the constitutional republic that God has placed you in, and it's a form of passive rebellion against God.
SPEAKER_12Well, recently Josh had a chance to sit down with one of his heroes in the faith, Frank Turek.
SPEAKER_03Frank, um, I'm really honored that you came. You did not have to do this. I try to expose my people to the people that God's used in my life. I'm literally holding this is the copy of your book that I had in 2000. So I read that guy when I was struggling and God using my life two decades before I would ever meet you. Excellent. I am very grateful for you.
SPEAKER_12I'm blessed it it had an impact. Such a meeting of the minds and massive view count is reason enough to review their conversation. But as I listened, I became increasingly Canadian angry at what I was hearing. If you're a regular viewer, you'll know I go out of my way to avoid accusing someone of lying. That is almost always an extra burden of proof one need not take on. Being sincerely mistaken is a preferable assumption to deliberately deceptive. Unlike what Christians quoting Romans 120 think, we can't read minds or know thoughts or be certain about motive. But I think when you have one man admitting that he shares factually dubious memes to scare strangers into faith, and the other man having been corrected over and over and over to his face at live events that are recorded just for today, this might be justified. Here are the receipts, and I will let you decide.
SPEAKER_02Christianity did not begin with a book, it began with an event, the resurrection. There would be no book where Jews in the first century claimed a man claimed to be God and rose from the dead, who then went and suffered and died for it, unless a man really did claim to be God and really did rise from the dead.
SPEAKER_12Perhaps Frank will clarify this further, but it's ridiculous to say there could be no book claiming a resurrection unless said person actually rose from the dead. There are ancient written tales of Osiris, Dionysus, Heracles, and Asclepius being restored to life. Historical figures like Apollonius of Tiana, Romulus, and Aristheus of Procinesis all have written accounts of rising from the dead. We have modern works featuring Gandalf, Aslan, Harry Potter, Neo, and Jon Snow all dying and returning to the living. To say there can be no book unless the supernatural events inside happened opens the floodgates to every holy book that Frank would reject. Because there's no motive to make this up. Well, that's not the only option to consider, is it, Frank? It is my contention that the gospel authors all fully believed what they were writing, while at the same time using literary devices, hyperbole, exaggeration, and polemics for the greater good of winning converts at the expense of historical accuracy. In fact, it's gonna be a running theme that Frank and Josh are willing to exaggerate, lie, or say things they can't corroborate, all in the service of the greater good of winning people to Jesus. And it surprises me, Frank, that you can't imagine a motive for a bunch of fishermen who quit their labor-intensive jobs and instead got to travel around with all their needs met, talking about Jesus and being treated like a celebrity.
SPEAKER_02This is why socialism doesn't work, will never work. It contradicts human nature. Human nature is to be lazy, human nature is to be dependent. In reality, we're inherently selfish and will work as little as we can and take as much as we want. So it's uh it's a misunderstanding of human nature.
SPEAKER_12Quite a mystery. James, the brother of Jesus' life, got much better once the resurrection stories started circulating. Why might James convert? In the honor-shame culture of the first century Judea, crucifixion cast a stigma on the victim's entire family. James, as the eldest surviving male, would have been obligated to restore family honor. So if there's suddenly a movement gaining ground that honors your family rather than shuns it, that's an easy group to join, if only pragmatically. Outside of the movement, James was the brother of a crucified criminal. Inside the movement, he was the brother of the Messiah. He could beat Joshua to Moses. And it worked. He became the head of the church, bossing Peter around. When the high priest Ananas had James executed out of political envy, Josephus records that law observant Jews who had nothing to do with the Jesus movement were outraged. Their complaints to Roman authorities were so sustained and credible that Ananus lost his position. James had built a reputation for piety and fairness that crossed religious lines, earning himself the nickname James the Just among non-Christians. So whatever version of faith he was promoting, it was indistinguishable enough from Judaism that Torah observant Jews mourned him and Romans avenged him. That is not the resume of someone whose life got worse by joining the movement. Again, not that any of them would have had to have been blatantly making anything up. They could have just been working on half-truths, like modern-day apologists do.
SPEAKER_02All the writers of the New Testament, as you know, with the exception of Luke, were all Jews. They're all, they're all Yahweh-believing, uh, Old Testament. We're God's chosen people believers who didn't believe a man could claim to be God. That was blasphemy. Didn't believe a man, one man would rise from the dead. Uh, they knew we'd all rise from the dead at the end of time, but they didn't think one guy was going to do all this.
SPEAKER_12Now, Frank, I know you know you've had guests try to teach you that first century Judaism didn't have monolithic views.
SPEAKER_02Let's start right in the first century Jesus' time. We see all these major sects of Judaism. We have Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, maybe some others. Who generally, in a, you know, in a kind of a summary way, what who were these different sects? What did they believe?
SPEAKER_01Right. They they had certain things in common, and then there was great diversity among them. So if Christians think today of Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox and Protestant evangelical and other groups, they realize, okay, there are certain things that you would say are in common, but then a lot of diversity between them.
SPEAKER_00Trevor Burrus, Jr. Especially given the commonplace nature of resurrection at that time and place. After all, Lazarus was raised, never said a word about it. The daughter of Jairus was raised, didn't say a thing about what she'd been through. Um and the Gospels tell us that at the time of the crucifixion, all the graves in Jerusalem opened, and their occupants wandered around the streets to greet a pupil. So that it seems the resurrection was uh uh something of a banality at the time. Not all of those people clearly were divinely uh conceived. So I'll I'll give you all the miracles, and you'll still be left exactly where you are now, holding an empty sack.
SPEAKER_02And I'm no probability theory guy, but I think this is true about probability theory. He says, when you look at an event and you want to know whether or not it really took place, you don't just have to look at the evidence for the event. You have to look at the evidence you have and say, what is the likelihood I would have this evidence if the event did not occur?
SPEAKER_12What is the likelihood that there would be books about resurrections if the resurrections didn't occur? It seems to me I already gave a tip of the iceberg list of books about resurrections the Christians agree didn't happen. There's nothing about the Gospels that can't be explained by sincerely mistaken writers or writers attempting literary works, or authors somewhere on the spectrum between those extremes.
SPEAKER_13A false statement is not always a lie. I hear this all the time. TPUSA lied about this, TPUSA lied about that. A false statement is not necessarily a lie. Sometimes people are just misinformed. It was unintentional.
SPEAKER_02So I don't think we're as honest as we think we are, or let me put it in a finer way. I don't think we always know if we are being honest, because our faculties may have been degraded by our own suppressing the truth over many years. Sometimes we don't want to be confused by the facts. Sometimes we'd rather believe what we want to believe rather than what is really true. I'm reminded of what Pascal said. He said people almost invariably base their beliefs not on the basis of proof, but on the basis of what they find attractive. Well said. Would the resurre if the resurrection did not occur, would we have all these Jews sacrificing themselves for a lie they knew was a lie?
SPEAKER_12Now, if you're a regular viewer, you'll suspect that I'm about to tear Frank apart for making this long discredited die for a lie talking point. But in a few minutes, Frank is gonna scold Josh for this. So I'll save myself for that. What will remain a mystery is why Frank is using the talking point himself when he's going to rebuke someone for using it later in the same interview.
SPEAKER_02Would we have the church growing out of Jerusalem when the empty tomb was known? Where the tomb was known.
SPEAKER_12We have no evidence outside the Gospels, which colluded with each other on this point that the body of Christ ended up in a location known to his followers or even his enemies. This is entirely it is part of the legend, not a fact to be explained. Very briefly, one needs to think about who disposed of the body. In the order of likelihood, most likely it was the Romans, who would have let dogs and birds eat it for a few days and then dump it in an unmarked mass grave. If you buy into the notion that Judea was a special exception, then the next most likely was the family. But the Bible explicitly insists that it wasn't the family, and their burial locations would have been in Galilee anyhow. So if those follow through, you're left with the Jewish Sanhedrin who were commanded to dispose of unclaimed bodies and put them unvenerated into one of two criminal graveyards outside of town. None of these options give you a known location. So the early Christians had to invent a rich, friendly religious ruler who would vote to kill Jesus in the morning, but by nightfall is rescuing the body and putting it somewhere people could recognize and visit. This isn't impossible, but it's very far-fetched and has all the markings of trying to retroactively fill plot holes. Here in the world of evidence, we consider the very common things to be more likely than the unheard of things.
SPEAKER_02I think I think it takes more faith to believe that we would have the kind of Christianity that came out of the first century today if Jesus hadn't risen from the dead.
SPEAKER_12Greg likes to use faith as a pejorative. His book and his podcast are called I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.
SPEAKER_02We're using the word faith in this title the way Richard Dawkins uses it. Richard Dawkins says that if you don't have evidence, you have faith, blind faith. Now that's not the biblical definition. The biblical definition is trusting in what you have good evidence to believe is true. But when you put it this way, I'm essentially saying that since I believe atheism has very little evidence behind it, and I think Christianity has a lot of evidence behind it, you have to have more faith to be an atheist than you do to be a Christian.
SPEAKER_07How do you feel about the definition of faith as being the excuse given for believing things without a good reason? That's Richard Dawkins' definition. That's actually Matt Del Huntington.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I th I think that's the colloquial definition, Bob. So um so I I I that's the that's the definition we're using. But inside the book, we explain what true faith is. Well, the title is playing off the traditional sort of uh sort of definition that people think faith means. Faith, they think, means when you don't have any evidence, you just believe it blindly. That's what the title is using. But that's not the definition of faith. The real definition of faith is trusting in what you have good evidence to believe. But people bring up atheism. You might be able to cede the conversation by saying, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist, and then be quiet. See what they say. Usually when I say that, my people will laugh and then they'll ask a question. They've never heard I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. That's turning a concept on its head that only people who believe in God have faith. And of course, it depends on what faith means. Faith in this sense means the way that people think about faith uh in our culture, that faith is what you do when you don't have any evidence, that faith is blind. Of course, that's not the faith of the Bible.
SPEAKER_12I'm sure he thinks of it as merely a rhetorical device for winning converts. But once again, Frank is using hyperbole and saying things the opposite of what he literally believes, all the while insisting that no Christians in the first century would have used similar rhetorical tactics.
SPEAKER_03The biggest thing for me is number one, how in the world do you get what happened in the next two centuries in particular if Jesus didn't rise from the dead?
SPEAKER_12Once Christianity got to the point where recruits were making recruits, there's nothing even slightly different between actions prompted by a veritical resurrection and actions prompted by belief in a resurrection that didn't actually happen. Just like every Christian today is relying on secondhand testimony, so too were all but a handful of the initial followers.
SPEAKER_03No actual resurrection is required. And then actually, Trina, do you have that thing, the little meme, the how did the 12 apostles die? Can you toss that up real quick? We got this is like Joe Rogan's Jamie Trinity. No, no, no, not that one, not that one. The the how did the 12 apostles die, the gray one. Nope, not that one either. We'll get there. It's that one. Okay. Oh, yeah. Now, this is a little, so if somebody's listening or watching on YouTube, this is actually really helpful to screenshot. Is it is it already up there, Trinity? Is it okay? It's fired. This is actually helpful to screenshot. I screenshot of this a while ago. So some of these are a little specious, but they're based on um on church history documents. Josh wants everyone to screenshot this meme for reference.
SPEAKER_12But he's also aware that some of these are, in his words, a little specious. In other words, he's encouraging other Christians to use material that is not true. He doesn't care, it can make converts. So if it's sketchy, just ignore that. Again, if this is the attitude of this generation of Christians, why should we assume that the first generation of Christians didn't also prioritize evangelism over truth?
SPEAKER_03It's every apostle's reported death. So you've got Peter crucified upside down, Andrew crucified on an X-shaped cross, James, son of Zebedee, put to death with stones and sword. Obviously, Apostle John's the only one that is not martyred, dies in Patmus in exile. Bartholomew crucified, Flayed, beheaded, Philip crucified upside down, Thomas speared, etc. You go through all 12. Well, and you if somebody wants to screenshot that, I literally keep that in my iPhone so that when I'm having conversations on a plane, it's like I know, man.
SPEAKER_12Let me just say this is something to consider. Josh keeps this handy on his phone so that he can knowingly spread misinformation to potential converts he meets on an airplane. Not a single one of these methods of death is attested to in the first two centuries of strangely, his card even contradicts James son of Zebedee, the only disciple death referenced in the Bible. He's got 11 gruesome deaths which are not affirmed historically purely for shock value. This is lying for Jesus.
SPEAKER_03And I've literally been on planes and airdropped that to people I'm having coming. I'm like, hey man, I just want you to consider this. Because what you said is like baseline, people don't die for things they know are lies.
SPEAKER_12Right, right. And the men on your card did not die for things they knew either. Most we can't affirm their deaths at all. And the few with a little evidence weren't actually given a chance to recant to save their lives. Nor do we have any indication that they were actually killed for ideology. No one will die for a known lie, but Josh will lie for the most high.
SPEAKER_02Now, I just did a podcast with Dr. Sean McDowell, who did his doctrinal dissertation on the fate of the apostles. And um, Sean went into the original documents. He did that? Oh, yeah, and he just updated it. Really? So it just it's called the fate of the apostles. It might actually be affordable. His first one was like $100 on, you know. Anyway, uh, we just did a podcast, the I don't have enough faith to be an atheist podcast. And he would agree with most of that. He would not agree with most of that.
SPEAKER_10I think there's also been a hyper trust by many Christians who read followers and says, hey, they all died as martyrs, and they proclaim it. Well, I've met that claim in the past, so I repent on this show from making it before I did my research. That should be corrected as well.
SPEAKER_02Sean said that four, we have excellent evidence in the first century that they were martyred. Paul, which it wasn't one of the twelve originally, but Paul, Peter, James, the half brother of Jesus, Josephus tells us that, by the way. Correct-ish.
SPEAKER_12While Frank gave three names, only one of those men is on Josh's meme. And Josh McDowell will tell you that Peter was almost certainly not crucified upside down. Paul and James are not on Josh's meme because they're not disciples.
SPEAKER_02And then James, the other guy you had up there, son of Zebedee. Those four in the first century, very good evidence. We know we know it.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, solid. Now, James, son of Zebedee, is not at the same evidential level. There is just one source, and it's the book of Acts. It's worse than that.
SPEAKER_10A few things I've changed my mind. Number one, I probably would assess James, the son of Zebedee, one notch down. And that's because we have one good source for James in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_12The next eight varying levels of evidence, but some of them we know nothing about. In the revised version of his book, Sean moved several more disciples into the category of definitely not martyred.
SPEAKER_10All right, here's the bomb. The traditional story is, Frank, that John died naturally, and the others died as martyrs. Right. I think three of the apostles likely died naturally. John died naturally.
SPEAKER_02I think that's always been the case, they thought anyway.
SPEAKER_10Okay. Nothing new on that. I think Matthew and Philip also died naturally. And I think the evidence is there for that.
SPEAKER_02But he will say he does say this that there is no report from the ancient world anywhere that any of the fourteen ever recanted.
SPEAKER_12This is another lie of omission because we don't have a single account of any of these men being given a chance to recant. For those with the strongest evidence, Peter, Paul, James' brother, Jesus. It seems the first two were killed for Nero's fire, and James out of workplace envy. So none of these were even recanting situations. Frank's boast about recanting means nothing if these men couldn't have saved themselves by recanting. I really hate how they get away with this. So they're all willing to die for it. We're not sure if they all did. We have no idea if they were all willing to die for it. Only two of the original twelve, Peter and John, can even reliably be shown to have been part of the church. For the rest, we cannot even say they even once ever affirmed a resurrected Jesus or believed in the mission after Jesus' death. Neither Frank nor anyone can demonstrate even this watered down version of the claim.
SPEAKER_02We have really strong evidence for four, pretty strong evidence for two more, not as well for the others, but nobody ever decides to recant. There you go. Yeah.
SPEAKER_12To better recap, of the twelve on Josh's meme, we have strong evidence for one. One more is in the Bible, so and the rest we know nothing, really.
SPEAKER_03The only option for the apostles is one of two things. Either Jesus rose from the dead or they knew it was a lie and were willing to die for it.
SPEAKER_12There are options beyond this simplistic take of two things. Some may have been sincerely mistaken, other disciples may never have believed and went back to their previous lives, never to be heard from again.
SPEAKER_03Number two, these guys are willing to die for it. Number three, we have like if you I mean, just all you got to do is travel over there. It's like you go to Israel and real quick you start going like, hey man, uh this stuff happened because like you're seeing I'm standing where this happened. Right. Oh yeah. Uh obviously you've got the biblical archaeological archaeological evidence for you know for the historicity of the New Testament.
SPEAKER_12Archaeology has affirmed the existence of some people and cities, but no archaeology has affirmed a supernatural event in the New Testament. Standing somewhere doesn't confirm that an event in the gospels happened there.
SPEAKER_03And then honestly, a big one for me, I don't know how you feel is just very frankly, just like changed lives, not just in history, but like even today.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, of course, yeah. Changed lives. Really, Josh? Every religion has changed lives, every philosophy has changed lives, self-help gurus have changed lives, diets have changed lives, many things have changed lives that directly contradict other things that have changed lives. This is not a differentiator to help one determine that one view is more true than another.
SPEAKER_03It really seems like that dude's alive. Yeah, yeah. That's right. That's right. I kind of go back to that.
SPEAKER_02It takes more faith not to believe he's alive, actually. And that's why there's no good alternative explanation for the resurrection. You know, hallucinations don't work. Like, you know, uh people don't have group hallucinations. Like if I walked in here and said, hey Josh, that was a great dream we had last night, you'd go. What? Dreams are individual. I'd want to get a restraining order. Yeah, that's right.
unknownYeah, what the hell are you talking about?
SPEAKER_12Group hallucinations are needed only to explain group appearances. But here's the thing we have no firsthand testimony from anyone allegedly involved in such an appearance. We have only hearsay, and not even hearsay that corroborates the other group appearance hearsay. So the giggling about the absurdity of group hallucination is quite misplaced.
SPEAKER_02If he was in the tomb and someone did have an hallucination, someone had gone to the tomb and stopped and said you're having an hallucination, right? There's no theory, naturalistic theory that explains the evidence.
SPEAKER_12And that's because you're defining the events described in your story as evidence, which is bait and switch from earlier when you seem to acknowledge that the existence of the stories is the actual evidence. I don't grant that there was a remembered tomb to go check. Just like group appearances, an empty tomb isn't a fact for me to explain.
SPEAKER_02These are story elements. Now, is it possible Jesus rose from the dead? Yes, if God exists. So you got to establish that first. And you know, the greatest miracle in the Bible is not the resurrection. The greatest miracle in the Bible is the first verse. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. If that verse is true, every other verse is possible. And in our book, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist, we point out that even atheists are admitting the evidence for the first verse. They're thinking the universe exploded into being out of nothing. Now they don't think it's God, but what else could it be?
SPEAKER_12Bad news for you, Frank, because released in May 2026 was Big Mysteries Survey, physicists' views on cosmology, black holes, and quantum foundations, which is described as one of the largest surveys ever conducted of professional physicists on foundational questions in physics and cosmology. It turns out only 25% of those active in the field think that there was an absolute beginning of time, meaning the rest endorse some version of a past eternal universe. So now you know it's a misrepresentation to infer that scientists broadly or increasingly say that something came from nothing. Except that this has been pointed out to you repeatedly for decades, and you've not adjusted your talking point.
SPEAKER_09First of all, we don't know of anything that came from nothing. There's no example of this at all. You quoted Stephen Hawking quite a bit. Hawking's point was that not that the universe comes from nothing. There's not this like creation event from nothing. When physicists talk about nothing, they don't mean what theologians mean. They mean there's this quantum energy field out of which things pop from just the pure energy. We know of no nothing. We don't know anything about what the universe was like at the very beginning. As far as we know, uh it could be an infinite universe going all the way back, not a beginning infinitely long ago, that the Big Bang creation from the singularity point was itself just on the continuum of there's always been something.
SPEAKER_06In your dichotomy about someone or no one creating something out of nothing, you assume that the universe was in fact created out of nothing. But I think maybe this is a bad inference. Um I agree that whatever begins to exist has a cause, but the universe is uniquely an exception because there was never a time when the universe didn't exist. So it's literally been here for all time. Therefore, even though the universe had a beginning, it doesn't need a cause. So if a timeless God exists, he has no cause, but we can just say instead that the universe itself has no cause and we have no need to infer a creator.
SPEAKER_02Okay, you're but what created time, space, and matter?
SPEAKER_06I'm saying nothing. It wasn't created. It's always been here for all time.
SPEAKER_08It sort of feels to me that this is a misrepresentation of the evidence because physicists like what physicists do, what cosmologists do, is they create models of how we can have a low entropy state, right? And there there are tons of models of early uh beginningless um so eternal universes or universes that have a beginning.
SPEAKER_02Right, but the key word you put there is models. Sure, that's what physicists do. They all point to the fact that space-time and matter had a beginning.
SPEAKER_08See, and I think this is where the physicists would disagree with you. And and I have uh a ton of quotes that I can pull up. I prepared them for this. But physicists don't refer to the Big Bang theory as the uh beginning of space-time and matter. They're very specific that uh they're referring to the hot dense state that comes after cosmic inflation. So you have uh some undefined amount of time or space, which is the singularity, but we're not sure if it's actually. But how do they define a singularity? Well, we're we're not sure, right? So this is where um general relativity breaks down, and we need a new theory of quantum gravity, right? And so uh because we don't have that yet, our math stops working at the singularity. But uh beyond that, we have inflation, and then we have the Big Bang. And so the Big Bang Theory is really from uh the end of inflation to the modern day, it isn't referring to that initial uh initial state, whether it was timeless, immaterial, etc.
SPEAKER_02So if there was nothing, how do you get something from nothing without a cause?
SPEAKER_00How do you get I can answer the same question in the way I did before how do you get so much nothing from something?
SPEAKER_03Atheists believe in at least six miracles. Something from nothing. We've already talked about this.
SPEAKER_12There's no reason to think that there ever was nothing. Order from chaos. The physical properties of matter routinely produce ordered structures like molecules, snowflakes, crystals, hurricanes, and planetary systems. Self-organization is one of the most familiar features of physics. This needs no divine intervention, just consistent physical behavior and energy flowing through a system. Life from non-life. Life appears to emerge gradually from increasingly complex chemistry. The boundary between living and non-living isn't even sharp. Viruses, viroids, and self-replicating molecules blur the distinctions. Amino acids form naturally, nucleotides can form, lipid membranes self-assemble, and RNA can both store information and catalyze reactions. We still don't know every step, but every decade the problem looks more like chemistry and less like magic. Personal from the non-personal. Honestly, I'm not even sure what Josh means by personal. If he means consciousness or subjective experience, then that's an active area of neuroscience and philosophy. Every piece of evidence we have suggests consciousness scales with nervous system complexity rather than appearing as an all-or-nothing miracle. Reason from non-reason? Reasoning is the process of drawing conclusions from information. It's an activity, not a substance. So I don't even know what non-reason is supposed to mean. Individual neurons don't reason, just as individual transistors don't do mathematics. But billions of them organized into a network can perform inference. That's exactly what brains and computers do. And morality from matter. Perfect. Assuming Josh agrees that morality has to do with actions towards agents, and that agents are made of matter, then it is unsurprising that evaluations about such potential actions are rooted in material processes and considerations. In fact, the root of the golden rule is empathy, which is entirely explainable by the survival advantage of social species. None of these seem like miracles. Josh seems to be promoting gaps in misunderstanding just so that his God can fill said gaps.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so what would you say to the I'm trying to help the A, I'm trying to help the Christian who's never connected a dot before.
SPEAKER_11Okay.
SPEAKER_03B, I want to help the person that's like, okay, man, something happened inside of me when I heard that dude talking about Jesus on Easter, and I'm I I'm trying to get there. What would you say to the person that's like, yeah, but you guys are talking about evidence for resurrection, and I think I'm there, but don't like little legends spring up around people as you know, huge amounts of time, and you know, there's all sorts of mythical legends about people that have sprung up throughout history.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, maybe that just that's what happened with the Well, the problem is when you look at the evidence for Christianity, the documents aren't really the issue, not the New Testament documents. The creeds within the documents are. In other words, there were oral creeds memorized that were later written down. The earliest one, probably the most significant one we know about, is recorded in 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 to 8, where Paul says that he received and passed on what he received, that Christ died for our sins, that he appeared, that he rose from the dead, and he he he he mentions 14 people that saw the resurrected Christ, including himself, right? Um, or maybe 17, I can't remember the number. Anyway, it's at least 513, depending on how you define apostles. But who's counting? Uh that creed, even atheists like Bart Ehrman at UNC Chapel Hill says that creed is very early, goes back within a couple of years of the event itself. See, dude, look at that.
SPEAKER_12That's amazing. Yeah. Well, Frank, this is a lie you told me to my face one-on-one, and I corrected you.
SPEAKER_02This happened very early. Even Bart Ehrman from UNC Chapel Hill, who's probably the top skeptic in the world today, says the earliest evidence for the resurrection, even though he doesn't believe in the resurrection, is 1 Corinthians 15 verses 3 to 8, which is an ancient creed, that he says goes all the way back within a year or so of the of the supposed event. So that's so I actually had Bart on my channel last week to talk about Gary Habermas saying that very thing, and Bart disagrees. Bart says that's not what he did. Well, maybe he's changing his tune because he did believe that at one point. I've never said that.
SPEAKER_12And yeah, it probably wouldn't be hard for Frank to look it up to see what I've actually said. I do not think that this is a creed that goes back to weeks after Jesus' death. What's he thinking? And here you are, still out telling the same lie about Bart. There's no other way around it. You don't care if what you're saying is true.
SPEAKER_02There's at least 41 of those that predate Paul writing them down or the gospel writers writing them down. They were like oral traditions. Yes, oral that go back to the event itself.
SPEAKER_03And they date to within how many years is well- I know it varies.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, the Frank needs to pause here because this is a question he doesn't want to be asked. The honest answer is that Paul wrote these letters around 20 years after Jesus' death. So these creeds must be younger than 20 years. Beyond that, it's just guesses and vibes. No scholar so far has put forth any evidence beyond gut feel and wishes for any specific dating of said creeds.
SPEAKER_02The the first the biggest creed in 1 Corinthians 15, which is the earliest evidence for the resurrection in the entire Bible, although Paul wrote it down in 55 A.D., that creed comes from within a year or two of the alleged resurrection.
SPEAKER_12So that would be 33 AD. All you can say from the evidence is that Paul wrote it down in 55 AD. So the creed must come before that. Could have been 54 A.D.
SPEAKER_02So the source that we're writing down is from the event itself, even though we're writing it down 23 years later, right? It's the source that's the issue, not when you write it down. Although it does benefit to write it down within the age of the eyewitnesses because you can interview them, right? But the source material is the issue, not the date of the documents themselves.
SPEAKER_12That's somewhat correct. When something is written down doesn't make it true or false. A legend can spring up in hours. For example, around AD 165, philosopher Peregrinus Proteus staged a spectacular suicide, throwing himself on a funeral pyre during the Olympic Games. The event drew a huge crowd, including the satirist Lucian of Samosada. After Peregrinus died, Lucian says he ran into some of the dead man's admirers. As a joke, Lucian made up a story that there was an earthquake, and a vulture flew out of the flames, and Peregrinus had effectively become divine. Now Lucian says that by the time he reached the city, people were already repeating that same miracle story back to him as established fact. Some versions were even more elaborate than the one he'd invented. A spectacular death, followers who were emotionally invested, a miracle claim, rapid oral transmission, embellishment along the way, all in the course of one day. Frank is right. It doesn't matter if the Gospels were written just a few weeks after Jesus died. That wouldn't exclude the possibility of legendary development.
SPEAKER_03You were saying, man, you need two things. You need to believe God exists.
SPEAKER_02If God exists and Jesus rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_03If those two things are true, Christianity's true. Boom, we're there. Yeah, we're there. It's it's a bunch of dominoes fall after that. We we talked about, dude, here's some reasons you should believe Jesus rose from the dead. Can you talk about if somebody's like, man, actually, it's the first question I struggle with. Man, I I'm not sure God exists. Hey, hey, Frank, what are some reasons I really should think God exists?
SPEAKER_02Because there has to be an ultimate uncaused first cause. You can't go on an infinite regress of causes. This is the problem with atheism. They have no cause. They claim to be all scientific when science is a search for causes. When you get back to where to any foundation for anything they believe, they have no ultimate cause.
SPEAKER_12Even if Frank is correct that an infinite regress of explanations is impossible, and philosophers have argued about that for centuries, every worldview still needs a stopping point. Something has to count as the fundamental reality that nothing deeper explains. Philosophers call that a brute fact. Christians point to God as the place where explanation stops. I point to the material realm, or whatever fundamental physical reality eventually turns out to be. So Frank cannot fault atheists for accepting a brute fact without his own position facing the same problem. The real question is, which brute fact we have the best reason to believe in. We already know and agree that the material world exists. God is a further entity whose existence still needs to be demonstrated. Hawkham's razor tells us to prefer the simpler explanation, the one with the fewest assumptions, unless there's compelling evidence that forces us toward the more complex one.
SPEAKER_02We have a cause, and let's just uh go back to the beginning. Even atheists today are admitting, like for example, Stephen Hawking, who was probably the most famous atheist in the world, Hawk Hawking said, almost everyone believes that space-time and matter had a beginning at the Big Bang. Almost everyone believes that now, even him, right?
SPEAKER_12Hawking accepted that the observable universe evolved from an extremely hot early state we call the Big Bang. He did not think this established that space-time and matter literally came into existence from nothing at that moment. Much of his career was devoted to quantum cosmology, precisely because he believed the classical Big Bang picture breaks down at the earliest times. Has Frank been corrected on his misrepresentation of Hawking? Why, yes, he has.
SPEAKER_08Are you saying that Hawking didn't say what he said? Uh so you can look. Uh Hawking has had a PhD student who talks a bit about that quote, and he says that, you know, Hawking was sort of exaggerating there. And uh if you actually look at the theory, right, uh Hawking ended up the Harding Hawking Hawking Hartle model uh utilizes um that imaginary time. And uh so Hawking interpreted that as a beginning. Uh that quote is from a debate that he was having with Penrose. Penrose famously uh came up with the um conformal cyclic cosmology model, right? This is so it it's it's a uh open debate in physics, especially within the last 30 years.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so you think that it's an open debate whether or not the universe had a beginning. Is that what you're saying?
SPEAKER_08According to according to physicists. Trevor Burrus, Jr. In the sense that you mean beginning, yes. And there's a great like hour and a half uh series of interviews on um Phil Halper's channel uh on YouTube where he you know he interviews Hawking, he interviews Gooth, Velankan, all of these guys, and he asks them these questions.
SPEAKER_02Okay, but you understand, Matt, that people can say anything. Sure, they absolutely can.
SPEAKER_08But if you're gonna quote them, they could be saying anything.
SPEAKER_02Right, but uh I don't need their quotes. The only reason I put their quotes up here is because I don't have time to go through all the evidence. Okay? But if I go through the surge evidence, as you know from the book, Second Law, Universe Expanding, Radiation, Air Glow, Great Galaxy Seeds, and Einstein, and then you throw in the new Kalam as you call it, the fact that time had to have a beginning, I think it's very airtight that that space-time and matter had a beginning. Whether or not Hawking has changed his mind, you know, Hawking obviously toward the end of his life said that silly thing about gravity creating us.
SPEAKER_12And yet he's still going on podcasts with millions of subscribers and repeating this like it's a fact.
SPEAKER_02But if we investigate the evidence for the resurrection and realize Jesus really did predict and accomplish his own resurrection from the dead, then we can say that the same being that walked out of the tomb 1992 years ago is the same being in whose divine nature created the universe out of nothing. So we get that two-step. We show God exists, then we show Jesus rose from the dead, then everything comes together. Jesus is the creator. Bad news, Frank, you've established neither.
SPEAKER_03What do you think? Um, what do you do when you're on a college campus and somebody's like, dude, what so what am I supposed to do with dinosaurs? I had that last night. Did you? Yeah. What do I do, man? Do nothing with them.
SPEAKER_12They're dead. I mean, except for the birds, right? The descendants of dinosaurs who are therefore still technically dinosaurs. You gotta say non-avian dinosaurs if you want to say they're dead. At least if you want to keep the biologists from correcting you in the comments.
SPEAKER_02Whether that's a dinosaur or not, who knows? Who cares? That's not the point. And whether it depends on what viewpoint you take on how old the universe is. You know, I'm absolutely convinced the universe is at least 63 years old.
unknownAll right.
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna use that.
SPEAKER_12Okay. I won't say 63, I'll say 41. Okay, yeah, but that's hilarious. Josh, you sweet summer child, how can Frank be one of your spiritual heroes and you haven't heard his at least a decade old one-miners?
SPEAKER_02I'm absolutely convinced that the universe is at least 53 years old. Let me say I'm absolutely certain, Jose, the universe is at least 56 years old. I'm absolutely certain the universe is at least 57 years old. I'm absolutely convinced at least it's at least 59 years old. I'm absolutely convinced the universe is at least 60 years old. I'm absolutely convinced the universe is at least 61 years old. I'm absolutely convinced that the universe is at least 62 years old. I'm absolutely convinced that it's at least 63 years old. I'm absolutely convinced it's it's at least 64 years old. I'll throw my mom in there. It's at least 87. All right, okay, okay. But I I think the evidence is better it's old, but I don't really care how old it is, because no matter how far back you go, you need a creator. But the point is, if it's if it's young, okay, maybe they got wiped out in the flood. If it's old, then human beings and dinosaurs didn't coexist. Does it matter either way? No, there is a God. Jesus rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_12You need to trust in him for your salvation because you're a sinner. Get busy. With this tactic, Frank uses to not answer questions that might cause either his young Earth donors or his older donors to stop donating. You'd think he could spend that saved time shoring up his resurrection arguments. Uh, what is what's your deal on UFOs? They're unidentified flying objects.
SPEAKER_03UFOs good one library. They may never be unidentified. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02And you know what UFO UFOs are? Unidentified flying objects. By definition, they're unidentified. Do we know what they are? We don't know. You know what you Ross thinks? You know what you Ross is? He is a he thinks they're demonic manifestations. That's what I think. I he's probably right, dude. Yeah.
SPEAKER_12I mean, fine, I guess. This is probably the least harmful of all the conspiracy theory tangents they spiral off into. Can we get back to evidence discussion?
SPEAKER_03All right. So what here's what's really interesting is you talked about how like the quote unquote new atheism, when I was in college, that was like in the last five years, it seems like a the quote unquote new atheism is gone. I mean, it is dead dead.
SPEAKER_12This is the talking point on every apologist episode these days. If new atheism means four individuals, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins, then two are literally dead. And the other two are so scared of Islam that they're aligning themselves with Christians for pragmatic. Gender purposes.
SPEAKER_02So he's realizing that he would rather live in a Christian society or a society dominated by Christianity than he would in a society dominated by Islam. The problem with Richard Dawkins is most of his life he's been fighting the only bulwark against Islam. Because secularism, team Jesus. Yeah, that's right. Secularism isn't going to oppose it.
SPEAKER_12What does this have to do with arguments for Jesus exactly? I lost my faith around 2016. These guys don't matter to me.
SPEAKER_02Atheists don't have disciples or popes. The guy over there that Alan Hainline, the guy who invites me there, this past September, when I went, he said, Hey Frank, spend more time on the New Testament in I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. We're having a hard time finding atheists on campus. Dude, nobody's an atheist in here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_12I'd argue with Frank and Josh with the statistics showing atheism holding strong. The not religious, still the fastest growing category, and Christianity utterly tanking in the numbers. But you know what? Fine. If you don't think we exist, maybe you'll just leave us alone and we'll just quietly keep helping the work of six people deconverting from Christianity for each one adult who converts to Christianity.
SPEAKER_02It's your choice, but I warn you not to underestimate my power.
SPEAKER_03All right. So I I literally I had somebody say this one time. They're like, hey man, so doesn't the Bible say like no one can be righteous, but then God sends you to hell if you're not righteous? So they said, like, man, Christianity is like if God tells everybody they have to run one mile in 10 seconds and then sends everybody to hell because they couldn't do it. This is an excellent question.
SPEAKER_12God created the standard and he created the creatures unable to meet the standard. What you got, Frank?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but be perfect that your heavenly father is perfect. But if your creator also gives you a free way of avoiding the penalty, how is he unloving? He's offering it to you. Yeah, you can't be perfect. God is that a standard of infinite justice, so he can't allow unjust people to go unpunished. So what does he do? He's also infinitely loving. He doesn't want to punish us, so he punishes an innocent substitute in our place.
SPEAKER_12That is very much not an answer to why the God who created the standard and who also created the creature is punishing the creature for not doing the thing that their design doesn't let them do. This is a problem with the manufacturer. If a car company knowingly manufactured cars that burst into flames every single time they were driven, we wouldn't praise the company for including a fireproof suit under the seat. This sounds very much like abusive relationship language.
SPEAKER_02That's Jesus who comes to earth, adds humanity to his deity, and he allows us, the creatures that rebelled against him, to torture and kill him so he could take our punishment upon himself. And then all he says is, if you repent of your sins, accept me.
SPEAKER_12That sounds like a lot more work than just creating creatures capable of passing the test you've given them. Per Josh's example, I won't set you on fire for failing to run a mile in 10 seconds if you are sufficiently sorry for not doing the thing that you could never have done. I'll forgive you and give you my righteousness. It's free. You don't have to do anything. You absolutely do have to do something. First, you have to become convinced that the being offering the forgiveness exists. That's the minimum prerequisite for accepting the gift. I can't accept what I'm not convinced of. But the obvious problem is that people don't choose what they become convinced of. They're either convinced or they're not. So again, the fault lies entirely with the designer of the brain, the person in charge of supplying evidence, or both, since Frank thinks those are the same being. How is that unfair? It's not, it's not unfair, it's actually gracious. I guess that depends on your definition of fair, but it's certainly not something equally available to everyone. As I just said, God made the brains, and God is in charge of supplying the evidence. Some brains are convinced by this evidence, and some are not. Those who are not cannot make an informed choice to accept or reject.
SPEAKER_02And I always tell people like, you know, you're only going to get two things in the afterlife. You're either going to get grace or you're going to get justice. I don't want justice. Do you want justice? I don't really want an afterlife.
SPEAKER_12At least not an infinite one. Are you sure we get one? What makes you think we get one?
SPEAKER_02In the afterlife, if it if an infinitely just judge is going to judge us, we're not going to make it. We need somebody to step in and take the punishment for us. That's what Jesus does. That's awesome, man.
SPEAKER_12This is not remotely an answer to the objection that God is judging creatures he made for things that he didn't design them to be capable of doing. Yeah, but what about the guy who never hears about Jesus?
SPEAKER_02Well, the Bible says that uh, well, there's there's a couple of answers to this. Um, one is that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. So if you if you take a step toward the light that God has provided us, like he's given us two revelations, his works and his word. Okay. Everyone has his works, creation, conscience. We we know there's got to be some kind of moral creator out there. If you take a step toward that, God will give you the information you need to be saved. Because he wants to be saved, he wants us to be saved more than we do. Okay.
SPEAKER_12Incorrect. I lost my faith with tears, pleading for the information I needed to be saved. I mean, maybe it's coming eventually, but this doesn't happen 100% of the time, people take a step toward God. So this isn't actually an answer, just another way Frank's God is uneven in providing escape from the hell he created.
SPEAKER_02Let me put it this way. We all know people who hear the gospel and don't believe it, right? It could be that people that never hear the gospel wouldn't have believed it anyway.
SPEAKER_12Okay, so now people are being punished not for a choice they actually made, but for a choice they would have made if the universe were different. Are you telling me that there are people who would reject God in every possible universe? Like even in a universe where Jesus hangs out with that person all the time and their best friends, that person rejects them in every reality. If there's even a single reality where a person would become a Christian, it's not their fault that God created this universe instead of that one. It's sure to be such a relief on judgment day when God tells me he didn't provide me sufficient evidence to know he exists because it wouldn't have mattered, and the Paul from some other reality made this choice for me.
SPEAKER_02It could be that God so pre-arranged the world that those that don't want the gospel wouldn't have believed it anyway, even if the gospel came to them. And by not getting them the gospel, he's reducing their culpability. Just like when Jesus spoke in parables, right? He reduced their culpability.
SPEAKER_12You know what would be better than that if God didn't make the people who wouldn't believe him, just let those people go unactualized. The remaining people would still have the free will to choose, so there's no problem there. In your scenario, Frank, God is just unnecessarily making people for the purpose of going to hell.
SPEAKER_02In fact, at one point, I think it's in John, he says, Now that I've told you you're more guilty. That's right. If I hadn't told you, you wouldn't be as guilty.
SPEAKER_12This is very much an argument against evangelism and apologetics. You're just making people's hell worse than it would have been if the Christians had just kept their mouths shut. That will also be super comforting on judgment day. Sorry, Timmy, you could have had a not too bad hell, but Frank Turek came to your college and ruined it by preaching to you when you didn't want it and would never accept it because of how I made you. Anyhow, head on down to level four torture. It's all very fair.
SPEAKER_02I know this is gonna sound weird, maybe for your audience, but hell means God is love and man is free. Because God's not gonna force himself on people, people can freely do what they do, and hell is actually a place of justice.
SPEAKER_12The universe is like a mandatory dating app where if you swipe left, you burn alive. But it's your choice.
SPEAKER_03That's amazing. All right, let's do a couple of these rapid fire here. Yeah, rapid fire. Yeah, but uh, but Frank, what about all the horrible things done in Christianity's name? What about the crusades? What about the Inquisition?
SPEAKER_02Here's what I say when somebody plays Beethoven poorly, who do you blame?
SPEAKER_12To be fair, I think this is one of Frank's better points. The poor behavior of humans doesn't tell us whether Christianity is true. That said, because I think Christianity is false, when a Christian behaves admirably, I see that as a good performance despite a poor score, not because of it.
SPEAKER_03That's fantastic. All right, I'm gonna do two more. Go ahead. Um, yeah, but Frank, I read the Old Testament. God commands genocide.
SPEAKER_02I I would say, um, what do you mean by that? And what and and give me some evidence.
SPEAKER_03The uh man, I read about he just told Joshua and Israel to go in there and slaughter all the Canaanites, the slaughtering of the innocents, Frank. How in the how could that po be true?
SPEAKER_02He also said that he ought to slaughter um all the Israelites that worship the golden calf. So was it genocide or was it Sinocide?
SPEAKER_12Ooh, I've never heard that before. That's a good as we've already established, in Frank and Josh's worldview, every human is sinned. So there's no such thing as an unjust killing. So what is anyone complaining about? And David's wives being graped in public for the sins of David is just. And giving virgin daughters to soldiers for sexual slavery is fine, and so on, and so on. Maybe you think babies are sinless? No, God had them killed as well. Frank is fine with synocide, which is the arbitrary and selective murder of anyone God doesn't like at any given time.
SPEAKER_03A lot of times what when somebody says that there's a slaughtering of innocents in the Bible, I always say, Hey man, I got good news and bad news. Number one, good news. In every one of those instances, all the innocent ones were spared. Good news. Bad news. There were no innocents. There were no innocent. Take that, Canaanite babies. Last one. If somebody just says, hey man, I dude, I I tried Christianity. It just didn't work for me. I don't know. I I you know I was trying it, and the whole time I was going to church trying to be a Christian. I just wasn't happy. I was kind of miserable and just didn't work for me, wouldn't you? It's not supposed to work.
SPEAKER_12You're supposed to deny yourself and follow him. What's this work business? But wait, I thought one of Josh's top four arguments for God was that it absolutely does work.
SPEAKER_03Honestly, a big one for me, and I don't know how you feel is just very frankly, just like changed lives, not just in history, but like even today.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, of course, yeah.
SPEAKER_12If Christianity is true when it works and also true when it doesn't work, then you've got an entirely non-falsifiable claim. Frank, would you uh would you mind praying for people just real quick? Just pray us out. Oh, absolutely. All right. Well, they're wrapping up. And I didn't want to confuse any apologetics discussion with this side issue, but since you've made it this far, I hope you'll please indulge me for a minute.
SPEAKER_02Here's the illustration I use on college campuses. I say, take the entire North American continent from Central America all the way to Greenland, the 51st state, right? And stack it in dimes all the way to the moon. By the way, that was hilarious. Oh, you didn't catch it, man. You didn't catch it. I was waiting.
SPEAKER_11I was waiting.
SPEAKER_03That's amazing. A 50 second after Canada.
SPEAKER_02After Canada.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's right. It was a joke. Empty flower of the Gulf of America.
SPEAKER_11Let's keep it.
SPEAKER_12My country's autonomy isn't a joke. I've never done this before, but take off. You jackass.
SPEAKER_10Give your balls a tongue. I'm not your friend, buddy!
SPEAKER_12Elbows out. Elbows up. And since you've made it this far, might I ask a small favor? If you haven't already, please go to Paulogia.com and sign up for my once-a-month newsletter. I remain very concerned that YouTube might one day shut me down, and I'll have limited options for staying in touch with everyone. It'll take just a second, and there's not much clutter for your inbox. You know I hate clutter. If you want to see more of this former Christian taking a look at the claims of Christians, tap on the thumbnail on screen now, and I'll see you over there. Until next time. Later.