There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
I have exciting news. Do you remember a long time ago, when the famous atheist professor Will Provine invited Michael Behe to make the case for intelligent design at Cornell University? Well, 22 years later, Behe has returned to Cornell, to give a lecture to students and answer questions. Let’s find out what Behe’s arguments were and whether any biologists showed up to stump him.
So, it’s always fun to start with the announcement of the event. I like to support these events because I am very passionate about events on campus where students are presented with evidence that will help them to form more accurate views about the big questions of life.
Throughout history, most people, including most scientists, thought that the intricate mechanisms of life were purposefully designed. The design hypothesis fell out of favor in academia after 1859, the year Charles Darwin instead proposed that life evolved by utterly unguided random variation sifted by natural selection. In the past 75 years, however, much has been learned about the molecular basis of life that was completely unknown in Darwin’s era. In my talk I will argue that the astonishing discoveries of modern biochemistry require a reversal of our evaluation of Darwin versus design: the conclusion that, in large part, life was purposely designed has once again become rationally compelling.
I would like to get my hands on the slides for this lecture. Roger Pielke just gave a talk at Cornell earlier this month, and he posted his slides. Maybe I can get Mike to do the same. If you have ever seen one of his lectures, he actually has fun slides – he puts Far Side cartoons into his lectures to keep people paying attention.
Anyway, here is the audio from the talk, and here are his main arguments: 1) irreducible complexity and 2) Darwinian mechanisms cannot create new forms over time.
But he actually made 5 points in the presentation:
Design is NOT mystical – it is a normal empirical conclusion from physical evidence
Everyone (even Richard Dawkins) admits biology appears to be designed.
The progress of science has revealed structural obstacles to Darwinian explanations (irreducible complexity “Darwin’s Black Box” and the discovery that most observed beneficial mutations break genes “Darwin Devolves”).
Darwinian claims still rest on imagination and “just-so stories”.
We have strong evidence for real design but almost no evidence that Darwinism can build complex molecular machines.
What was interesting about this podcast? Well, like I said, I am really, really committed to helping students to hear two sides to the big questions of life. Most of the college students that I talk to in the workplace explain to me that their process of forming their worldviews was two-fold: 1) I wanted to have fun, and 2) I wanted the smart people (professors) to like me. It was just easier for them to accept certain beliefs in the college environment, and that’s why they accepted them. A lot of things that are false are just easier to believe for social or professional reasons: the universe is eternal, the origin of life is a solved problem, the fossil record shows gradual increases in complexity, the genome is 90% junk DNA – just complete nonsense. And the best way for them to correct these false beliefs is to bring an honest scholar like Mike Behe or Mike Licona to speak about evidence at the local university campus.
The podcast is fun because they really explain all the details of what happened. Who invited Behe to speak? Where did Behe speak? Who did Behe speak to? Were biologists invited? Did any biologists show up to confront Behe? How long was the talk? How long was the Q&A? Was the tone of the Q&A calm or argumentative? Did the Q&A stop because no one had questions, or was there a long line of people waiting to ask more questions?
Confronting naturalism on campus
I have a friend named Stephanie who just loves all sorts of protests and gatherings and marches. But for me, this is much better. Instead of people yelling at each other over politics, we can actually have some evidence presented, and minds can change. Maybe not right in the moment, but afterwards. This worked well for me when I was in my 20s. I used to order dozens and dozens of lectures and debates from university campuses from places like Veritas Forum and Access Research Network. I would listen over and over, and then when I tried out the evidence on co-workers (and I mean people with graduate degrees from good schools like UIUC and Purdue and Northwestern) they always had to concede. There is just something about being able to listen to Christians speak about evidence to college students – it’s just the right level of difficulty for software guys like me to understand it and learn how to speak like that. And this led to a lot of adventures.
Secrets of the Cell with Mike Behe
Well, if you listen to the podcast, and you like it, and you want to try to explain Michael Behe’s arguments to college students yourself, he does have quite a good series of lectures posted on YouTube:
Everything is so much easier now than it used to be for me in the old days. You guys don’t have to rewind VHS tapes and audio cassettes like I used to have to do! And if you hear a word or phrase that you don’t understand, just ask Grok to explain it to you like it would explain it to a high school student. Anyway, have fun.
“It is one thing,” Augustine of Hippo admitted when considering the difference between knowing the truth and putting it into practice, “to see the land of peace from a mountain’s wooded summit… and quite another to stay on the path that guides you there.”[1] It’s a helpful image to keep in mind as we grow in our knowledge and application of God’s truth. It’s also a worthwhile maxim to recall when attempting to retrieve a concept from the ancient past. It is one thing to throw out a theory articulating why ancient ecclesial apologetics might be relevant today, but it is quite another to provide fellow apologists with a path that guides them to use this method today. Still, any theory of apologetics remains incomplete until Christians are able to put it into practice in their present lives. My goal is to unpack two ancient ecclesial arguments to show how each example might be practically reconfigured for apologetics today. These are far from the only ecclesial arguments available to us. They are intended only as examples of how ecclesial apologetics works, not as an exhaustive accounting of such arguments.
An Ecclesial Argument Against Naturalistic Explanations of the Church’s Initial Expansion
In the days that followed the initial proclamation that God raised Jesus from the dead, only ten dozen or so women and men remained faithful to their Messiah’s memory (Acts 1:15). And yet, by the opening decades of second century, the news that a crucified Jew had returned to life spanned the Roman Empire from Syria to Spain, and at least four written retellings of his life were circulating in some of the empire’s largest cities. No one knows for certain how many people became Christians in the first century of the church’s existence, but it’s impossible to deny the church’s rapid initial expansion in response to the testimony of eyewitnesses.
The earliest defenders of Christianity saw the church’s early growth and survival as clear evidence of divine power at work. “Don’t you see that the more [Christians] are punished, the greater their number becomes?” one second-century apologist asked his interlocutor in EpistletoDiognetus. “These things do not appear to be human works; they are the power of God; they are the proofs of his presence.”[2]
Augustine of Hippo developed this line of thinking into a detailed argument that treated the church’s initial growth as evidence for the truth of the resurrection. According to Augustine,
Now, we have three incredible things, and yet all three have come to pass: First, it is incredible that Christ rose in the flesh and ascended with his flesh into heaven. Second, it is incredible that the world has come to believe something so incredible. Third, it is incredible that a few unknown men, with no standing and no education, were able to persuade the world… of something so incredible. Of these three incredible things, the people we are debating refuse to believe the first, they are compelled to grant the second, but they cannot explain how the second happened unless they believe the third If they still refuse to believe that Christ’s apostles really did work miracles to convince people to believe in the message of Christ’s resurrection and ascension, they leave us with one even greater miracle: that the whole world has somehow come to believe in a miracle without any miracles at all.[3]
Not even those who rejected the gospel in Augustine’s context could deny that men and women from a multiplicity of backgrounds had joined the church in response to the apostles’ initial message and miracles. And yet, unless the apostles actually saw death reversed and unless God worked miracles through them, it seems unlikely that the church would have survived. Unless supernatural events actually took place, no one would have taken the apostles’ claims seriously, and the eyewitnesses themselves would never have persisted in their proclamations through persecution. Thus, for Augustine, the initial rise of the church functioned as evidence for the truth of the resurrection. To acknowledge the church’s initial growth without admitting the truth of the resurrection would have been to assert that the world somehow became convinced of a miracle in the absence of any miracles, which Augustine saw as absurd.
Retrieving this ecclesial argument for the twenty-first century requires contemporary apologists to consider the rise of other religions as well as potential sociological explanations for the widespread reception of the apostles’ witness. In the centuries that stand between Augustine and us, historians and sociologists have shown that some aspects of the church’s multiplication from a few dozen faithful followers to a powerful minority in the Roman Empire might be assigned to reasons that are not supernatural. Given the rapid expansion over the centuries of religions such as Islam, this argument works only for the church’s initial expansion against all social odds in the first century in response to the testimony of eyewitnesses.
Nevertheless, Augustine was right to recognize the sheer unlikelihood that “a few unknown men, with no standing and no education,” could have convinced so many people unless these initial witnesses actually experienced something supernatural. Unlike Confucius and Siddhartha Gautama, who spent many years training their disciples, the teaching ministry of Jesus lasted only three years or so; unlike Muhammad, Jesus died in humiliation, with no armies, no wealth, and no heirs.[4] Yet the church grew in response to the testimony of eyewitnesses, and the best explanations of this initial multiplication point to the presence of a power that cannot be confined to natural categories. Thus, the church’s initial growth provides evidence for the miraculous underpinnings of the apostles’ proclamation.
Evidential apologists have tended to focus on the martyrdoms of the apostles, pointing out that these eyewitnesses would have known if the resurrection had been a fabrication, and no one is likely to die for a lie if they know it’s a lie.[5]34 This argument can be effective. And yet, many listeners may not be ready to grant the historicity of these martyrdoms as common ground. By starting with the church’s initial expansion against all natural odds in the first century, ecclesial apologetics takes a different route to the same truth, which reflects some of the earliest arguments for the truth of Christianity.
An Ecclesial Argument Against Naturalism
According to the second-century apologist Aristides of Athens, the church’s care for the parentless and the poor could not be sustained unless the deity confessed by the Christians was real and true. This apologist wasn’t alone in viewing the charity of the church as evidence for the truthfulness of the church’s faith. The apologetic arguments in Epistle to Diognetus similarly highlight the church’s habits of care for the disadvantaged.[6] This pattern persisted long past the second century. The last pagan ruler of the ancient empire complained that the church’s philanthropy toward strangers was still drawing people away from the venerable gods and goddesses in the fourth century.[7]
Aristides’s line of thinking was certainly cogent in its initial context. His argument may not, however, work for us in quite the same way that it worked for ancient defenders of the faith. One of the key reasons why the second-century church’s charitable habits seemed unsustainable apart from divine power was that these habits were so radically countercultural in their context. Greek and Roman cultures assumed that the weak and the marginalized didn’t matter. The church’s patterns of generosity declared the opposite, claiming that the powerless matter no less than the powerful. Today, care for the poor, the parentless, and the physically and mentally challenged doesn’t seem nearly as countercultural to us as it did to people in the second century. In contemporary contexts, even persons who despise Christianity tend to see such charity as commendable behavior.
How, then, can contemporary apologists retrieve this ecclesial argument? And how might this argument maintain its starting point in the moral habits of the church? One way to recontextualize the argument today is to demonstrate that secularity cannot provide a coherent rationale to explain why the vulnerable should be viewed as valuable. The belief that every human being is equally valuable and worthy of dignity was—as historian Tom Holland has noted—never a self-evident truth on the basis of any perspective outside the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.[8] This assertion is rooted in the self-authenticating truth of biblical revelation (Gen 1:27), and it was only through the church’s proclamation of the truth of Scripture that the world became convinced such a claim might be true. Christianity has undeniably failed at times to practice the biblical truths of universal human dignity and moral equality. And yet, without Christianity, no commitment to the universal moral equality of human beings would have come about in the first place.[9]
Since the notion that the vulnerable have value is ultimately grounded in God’s revelation, secular narratives of evolution and social progress can never provide a coherent rationale for this conviction. From the perspective of natural selection, what contributes most to human survival is “to favor kith and kin, do down our enemies, ignore the starving, and let the weakest go to the wall.”[10] And thus, even as secularists applaud charity and equality, their own constitutive narratives are incapable of explaining how these values might have evolved in the first place or why a community ought to practice such values.
Natural selection depends on the survival of the mighty and the sacrifice of the weak; Christianity is all about the sacrifice of the Mighty One for the sake of the weak.[11] This inversion of values revolutionized human history, and the ethics of care that flow from this revolution carry the trademark of the communion of the saints. Whenever a secular social order aspires to equality and charity, a system that claims to be godless is applying for a loan from the bank of the Christian tradition while simultaneously denying that the bank has any capital worth borrowing. Unreciprocated generosity toward the poor and marginalized is only perceived as praiseworthy in secular contexts today because people are still mining their values from the moral motherlode that two millennia of Christian tradition embedded in the soil of civilization.
And that’s why the church’s care for the vulnerable provides such vital evidence for the truth of our faith. Our churches are filled with acts of unreciprocated hospitality and generosity that reveal there must be more to the cosmos than mere matter. The family that adopts a foster child whose relational patterns have been disordered by years of abuse, the parents who choose to raise a son with Down syndrome instead of seeking the abortion their physician recommended, the woman who treats sex workers as human beings with dignity and helps them to forge new lives for themselves and their families, the layman who pours his life into educating inmates serving life sentences in a state penitentiary, and so many others—all these acts and more declare that naturalistic explanations of the cosmos are epistemologi- cally and evidentially defective. Secular expressions of such generosity can be, with few exceptions, traced back to the Christian tradition, which leaves us with a strong ecclesial defense against the materialist’s claim that the cosmos “is all there is or ever was or ever will be.”
This particular ecclesial argument doesn’t get us to the truth of the gospel, but it does falsify secular narratives that claim naturalistic evolution as a universal explanation for social phenomena. When practiced by an entire community, habits of unreciprocated generosity provide an apologetic argument that calls into question every materialist account of human social behaviors. Ecclesial arguments of this sort are ideally suited for contexts where conversations are more likely to start with the impact of Christianity on the social order than with apologetics grounded in the design of God’s world or the miracles in God’s word. Such arguments pave the way for deeper discussions that reveal the deficiencies of naturalistic metaphysics and epistemology. Placing the church at the forefront of apologetics in this way also makes it clear to the non-Christian that embracing Jesus without entering into the life of a local church is not a viable option.
[1] Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Volume I: Books 1–8, ed. Carolyn J.-B. Hammond (Harvard University Press, 2014), 7.21.
[2]TheEpistletoDiognetus(withtheFragmentofQuadratus), ed. Clayton Jefferd (Ox- ford University Press, 2013), 7.9.
[3]Augustine of Hippo, City of God, Volume VII: Books 21–22 (Harvard University Press, 1972), 22.5.
[4] Hans Küng, OnBeingaChristian (Doubleday, 1984), 335–46.
[5]See, e.g., Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, More Than a Carpenter, rev. ed. (Tyndale, 2009), 67–72. My critique is not intended to question the cogency of this argument; the argument itself is cogent and effective, and it remains valid and useful. I first encountered this line of reasoning in 1991 in an early edition of More Than a Carpenter, and the argument was instrumental in my return to confidence in the truth of Christianity after a season of doubt. My contention is that some of the effectiveness of historical evidential appeals may have diminished and that other approaches that include communal and ecclesial components might need to supplement, precede, or replace some of these arguments, at least in our initial encounters with non-Christians.
[6]Epistle to Diognetus, 10.2–8. The author seems to have been responding to a query related to the love of Christians for one another (“φιλοστοργιαν,” 1.1). The description of benevolent love described in 9.2 (“φιλανθρωπιας,” cf. Titus 3:4) suggests the love of Christians for one another is grounded in the love of God for humanity; imitation of God’s love causes Christians to reach beyond their love for one another and to love their neighbors who are not yet Christians.
[7] Julian, “22: Ἀρσακίῳ ἀρχιερεῖ Γαλατίας,” Letters.Epigrams.AgainsttheGalileans. Fragments (Harvard University Press, 1923). Cf. Julian’s usage of φιλανθρωπία (“ἡ περὶ τοὺς ξένους φιλανθρωπία”) with Epistle to Diognetus 9.2.
[9] Samuel Moyn, ChristianHumanRights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 6. See also Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, 385–88.
[10] Anthony O’Hear, BeyondEvolution:HumanNatureandtheLimitsofEvolutionary Explanation (Clarendon, 1997), 133; see also 129–32, 143–44.
[11]Language alludes to Glen Scrivener, The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality (The Good Book, 2022), 64–65..
The “appearance of design” in biological organisms is undeniable. Famed atheist, Richard Dawkins, once wrote, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” In my book, God’s Crime Scene, I offer a template of eight common characteristics of design. When we observe a number of these attributes in any questionable object, we are reasonable in inferring the existence of a designer. I described one of these attributes as the “Echo of Familiarity.” When an object under question strongly resembles another object we know is designed, this “echo of familiarity” should be considered as we try to determine whether a designer was involved in the object we’re investigating. Let me give you an example.
When my sons were young, they each had a police officer costume. As part of their costume, each had a plastic toy pistol shaped to resemble the old revolvers my dad’s generation of police officers used to carry. They weren’t precisely fashioned, but their shapes certainly echoed the design of real pistols, and my boys used them to effectively recreate a number of imaginary “cop and robber” games. These toy pistols were obviously the product of intelligent design, and even my young sons recognized the pattern similarity when compared to the pistols with which they were familiar (the ones used by their father and grandfather).
In a similar way, we’ve discovered biological micro-machines that resemble other known designed objects. One such machine has become the icon of the Intelligent Design movement. Biochemist Michal Behe wrote about the bacterial flagellum twenty years ago in his famous book, Darwin’s Black Box. The flagellum bears a striking resemblance to the rotary motors created by intelligent designers. University of Utah Biology Professor David Blair describes the amazing similarities: “An ensemble of over forty different kinds of proteins makes up the typical bacterial flagellum. These proteins function in concert as a literal rotary motor. The bacterial flagellum’s components stand as direct analogs to the parts of a man-made motor, including a rotor, stator, drive shaft, bushing, universal joint, and propeller.”
Illustration from God’s Crime Scene
Humans were building rotary engines for generations before we ever discovered the rotary design of flagella. We recognize the form of this rotary engine when we see it in bacteria; the shapes of flagella echo the designed engines we use in tools and vehicles. If our rotary engines are the product of intelligent design, it’s reasonable to infer a designer is responsible for other similarly shaped and constructed machines, even the micro-machines we find in cellular organisms. As Biochemist Fazale Rana, observes, “The contrast between . . . synthetic molecular motors designed by some of the finest and most creative organic chemists in the world and the elegance and complexity of molecular motors found in cells is striking . . . Is it really reasonable to conclude that these biomotors are the products of blind, undirected physical and chemical processes, when they are far beyond what the best human minds can achieve?”
The “echo of familiarity” demonstrated by the bacterial flagellum is one of eight attributes pointing to the existence of a Designer. By itself, this characteristic of design may not conclusively prove the case, but when coupled with the other seven attributes, the inference is overwhelming. To make matters worse, naturalistic evolutionary processes simply cannot account for the appearance of design we see in biology. For a complete cumulative case related to the bacterial flagellum, please refer to God’s Crime Scene, Chapter Four – Signs of Design: Is There Evidence of An Artist?
Dr. Graham Oppy, the moderator, is a well-known atheist philosopher. He let Dr. Krauss speak for 21 minutes and 40 seconds, which is why my summary of Krauss is so long.
The video:
Summary
After careful consideration, I decided not to be snarky at all in this summary. What you read below is what happened. There may be some small mistakes, but I will fix those if people tell me about them. I also included some quotes and timestamps for the more striking things that Dr. Krauss said.
The debate itself starts at 4:50 with Dr. Craig’s opening speech. He does use slides to show the structure of his arguments.
Dr. Craig’s opening speech. (4:50)
The kalam cosmological argument:
God is the best explanation of the origin of the universe
The Borde Guth Vilenkin theorem supports the absolute beginning of the universe
Even if our universe is part of a multiverse, the multiverse itself would have to have an absolute beginning
Speculative cosmologies try to challenge the Big Bang theory, but none of them – even if true – can establish that the past is eternal
Only two types of things could explain the origin of spece, time, matter and energy – either abstract objects or minds
Abstract objects do not cause effects, but minds do cause effects (we do it ourselves)
A mind is the best explanation for the origin of the universe
The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics:
The underlying structure of nature is mathematical – mathematics is applicable to nature
Mathematical objects can either be abstract objects or useful fiction
Either way, there is no reason to expect that nature should be linked to abstract objects or fictions
But a divine mind that wants humans to understand nature is a better explanation for what we see
The cosmic fine-tuning for the existence of intelligent life
There are two kinds of finely-tuned initial conditions: 1) cosmological constants and 2) quantities
These constants and quantities have to be set within a narrow range in order to permit intelligent life
There are three explanations for this observation: law, chance or design
Law is rejected because they are put in at the beginning or matter – they don’t emerge from matter
Chance must be rejected, because they odds are just too long unless you appeal to a world-ensemble
We do not observe what the world ensemble hypothesis predicts that we should observe
Design is the best explanation for finely-tuned constants and quantities
The existence of objective moral values and duties
Our experience of morality (values and duties) is that it is objectively real and incumbent on us
When someone goes into a classroom and shoots at innocent children, that is objectively wrong
On naturalism, moral values and moral duties do not exist – they are conventional and variable by time and place
The best explanation for the existence of objective moral values and duties is that God exists
The historicity of the resurrection of Jesus
There are three widely-accepted facts that are best explained by the resurrection hypothesis
1) the empty tomb, 2) the post-mortem appearances, 3) the early church’s belief in the resurrection
Naturalistic attempts to explain these 3 boilerplate facts fail
The best explanation of the 3 minimal facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead
The immediate experience of God
Belief in God is a “properly basic” belief – rational even without arguments because of experience of God
Seems to be saying that logical arguments can prove false things “it’s nonsense”
Dr. Craig distorted a podcast that some group made on pain receptors
Dr. Craig’s faith is so strong that it causes him to distort what this group said
Discussion: (44:35)
I will not be summarizing everything that was said, just a few main points. The segment from 52:18 to 57:12 about the Vilenkin e-mail on the BVG theorem is a must-see. Krauss is standing up and gesticulating while Craig is calmly trying to quote a paper by Vilenkin that shows that Krauss is misrepresenting Vilenkin. Krauss constantly interrupts him. After a while, when Craig exposes him as having misrepresented Vilenkin and gets him to admit that all current eternal models of the universe are probably wrong, he quietens down and can’t even look at Craig in the face.
Cosmological argument:
Craig: The e-mail says any universe that is expanding, on average, requires a beginning
Craig: There are two models – Aguirre & Gratton and Carroll & Chen – where there is a period of contraction before the expansion
Craig: The two models are the ones cited in the e-mail that Dr. Krauss showed
Craig: In the very paper by Vilenkin that I cited, he says that both of those models don’t work
Krauss: (agitated and interrupting) Vilenkin said that they have to make an assumption about entropy that they have no rationale for
(as Craig starts to talk Krauss makes an exaggerated, disrespectful gesture and sits down in a huff)
Craig: Yes, an unwarranted assumption means that they don’t have EVIDENCE for their theories being correct
Krauss: (agitated and interrupting) “All the evidence suggests that the universe had a beginning but WE DON’T KNOW!!!!!!!” (raising his voice)
Craig: I’m not saying that we know that the universe had a beginning with certainty
Craig: I am saying that the beginning of the universe is more probably true than false based on the evidence we have
Craig: And you agree with me about that – you think the universe had a beginning
Krauss: (agitated and interrupting) (Unintelligible)
Moderator: One at a time
Craig: In your Vilenkin e-mail slide, at the end of the paragraph where the two models are mentioned that Vilenkin specifically shows…
(I am guessing that Craig is going to ask why so much of what Vilenkin wrote has been cut out of the e-mail that Krauss showed)
Krauss: (agitated and interrupting) Because it was technical…
Moderator: Lawrence! Hang on a sec!
Craig: He specifically shows that these models are not past eternal, and that they require a beginning just like the others…
Krauss: (agitated and interrupting) We can do the math if you want
Craig: Now wait. I couldn’t help notice that there on your slide there was a series of ellipsis points indicating missing text…
Krauss: (agitated and interrupting) “Yeah, because it was technical!”
Craig: “I wonder what you deleted from the original letter”
Krauss: (agitated and interrupting) “I just told you!”
Craig: “Now wait. Could it have been something like this: (reads a quote from Vilenkin) ‘You can evade the theorem by postulating that the universe was contracting prior to some time. This sounds as if there is nothing wrong with having contraction prior to expansion. But the problem is that a contracting universe is highly unstable. Small perturbations would cause it to develop all sorts of messy singularities, so it would never make it to the expanding phase.’
Craig: “That’s Vilenkin.”
Krauss: “In this paper, that’s absolutely right”
Krauss: But it’s ok for theories to assume things that we know are wrong – they are still good theories – it’s unknown
(Craig turns away and looks through his papers)
Craig: “Isn’t it true that the only viable quantum gravity models on order today involve a beginning – have a finite past?”
Krauss: “No”
Craig: “Well, can you give us one then”
Krauss: (talks about a variety of possible eternal models) “In my experience in science, all of them are probably wrong”
Krauss: “You know most theories are wrong, which is why, you know, it’s hard”
Craig: “Right”
I noticed that a huge number of atheist web sites are taking the Vilenkin quote that Krauss used out of context, like this one and this one. There are probably a lot more of them like that, which I think is interesting. That’s why we have these debates, I guess. To set the record straight about who accuses people of being dishonest, and who is actually dishonest.
Fine-tuning:
Krauss tried to argue that he had explained the fine-tuning with the Higgs particle, but Dr. Craig said that only applied to the cosmological constant, not all the other examples of fine-tuning. Krauss said that it wasn’t impressive that this universe permitted life and that “It would have been much more surprising if we evolved in a universe in which we couldn’t live”. Krauss argued the fine-tuning was only for “Life like us”. But Dr. Craig explained that the fine-tuning is what allows us to have the basics of any kind of life, like slow-burning stars, chemical diversity, etc. – things that are required for basic minimal life functions in any living system. Craig said that he was working with the current physical laws of this universe (F = ma, etc.) and that he was looking at what changed if we changed those even slightly. Krauss tried to say that if he changed things like the mass of particles then the strength of forces would change. (But the forces aren’t laws!) Krauss argued that the cosmological constant would be even better for life if it was zero, and Craig said that the life permitting range did include zero, but that the range of life-permitting values was narrow.
Jesus’ existence:
Craig reponded to the mystery religions charge, the charge that the evidence for the minimal facts is too late/too weak, the charge that grief visions explained the evidence better, and Hume’s argument against miracles. Craig brought up the early creed from 1 Cor 15:3-7 and explained to Krauss that it was 5 years after the events, and that Jewish standards of oral transmission were strong enough to ensure that the creed was reliable, and most of the eyewitnesses would still have been alive.
Audience Q and A: (1:21:09)
The first topic is the grounding of morality. Krauss agrees that there is no objective morality and no objective moral oughts. He also said that that standards of behavior are arbitrary, and that they change over time and they are adopted for promoting social order. Dr. Craig pressed the point that science itself would collapse without ethical values. It assumes them, but cannot ground them.
The next topic was free will. Krauss is a determinist. Craig asked him how he could reconcile moral responsibility with determinism.
The next topic was the effectiveness of mathematics. Krauss didn’t have an explanation for it and didn’t think it needed one. Then they got into whether the Genesis has been verified by science and whether it is meant to be taken literally.
The next topic was whether philosophy makes any progress. Craig gave the example of verificationism being rejected as too narrow, and self-refuting. Krauss: “I’m going to come to the defense of philosophy for the first time”. Craig: “That’s amazing!” Krauss said that science provides new knowledge. Craig said there were some things that could be known apart from science.
In our series on “20 Arguments for God’s Existence,” we have relied solely upon the resource offered by philosopher Peter Kreeft “Twenty Arguments God’s Existence.” This week, we consider the Argument from Conscience from another work from Kreeft, the Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics.
Kreeft explains the argument as follows:Since moral subjectivism is very popular today, the following version of, or twist to, the moral argument should be effective since it does not presuppose moral objectivism. Modern people often say they believe that there are no universally binding moral obligations, that we must all follow our own private conscience. But that very admission is enough of a premise to prove the existence of God.
Isn’t it remarkable that no one, even the most consistent subjectivist, believes that it is ever good for anyone to deliberately and knowingly disobey his or her own conscience? Even if different people’s consciences tell them to do or avoid totally different things, there remains one moral absolute for everyone: never disobey your own conscience.
Now where did conscience get such an absolute authority-an authority admitted even by the moral subjectivist and relativist? There are only four possibilities: (1) from something less than me (nature); (2) from me (individual); (3) from others equal to me (society); or (4) from something above me (God). Let’s consider each of these possibilities in order.
1. How can I be absolutely obligated by something less than me- for example, by animal instinct or practical need for material survival?
2. How can I obligate myself absolutely? Am I absolute? Do I have the right to demand absolute obedience from anyone, even myself? And if I am the one who locked myself in this prison of obligation, I can also let myself out, thus destroying the absoluteness of the obligation which we admitted as our premise.
3. How can society obligate me? What right do equals have to impose their values on me? Does quantity make quality? Do a million human beings make a relative into an absolute? Is “society” God?
4. The only source of absolute moral obligation left is something superior to me. This binds my will morally, with rightful demands from complete obedience.
Thus God, or something like God, is the only adequate source or ground for the absolute moral obligation we all feel to obey our conscience. Conscience is thus explainable only as the voice of God in the soul.1
How does someone go from co-founding one of the world’s most visited websites as an atheist to becoming a Bible-believing Christian? And what kind of evidence can shake a skeptical philosopher out of his naturalistic worldview?
This week, Frank sits down with Dr. Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, to explore the surprising path that led him back to faith in Christ. Tune in as Larry shares how his early exposure to Christianity faded during his academic journey, how his curiosity was reignited by some disturbing cultural trends, and why he began to see the Bible in a new light. During their conversation, Frank and Larry will answer questions like:
When and why did Larry stop believing in Christianity?
How did Wikipedia get started and what does it teach us about human nature?
What was it about the Bible that inspired Larry to read through it with a critical lens and what passages intrigued him the most?
How did reading the Bible in 90-days change his perspective?
What do skeptics and apologists often overlook in the evidence for God?
Why is changing someone’s worldview so difficult and what’s the best approach to do so?
In this episode you’ll hear about Larry’s exciting new project and how his love for philosophy, a hunger for truth, and disillusionment with shallow arguments led him to reconsider the Christian worldview. From confronting evil in the world to exploring the design behind creation, Larry’s journey is both intellectual and deeply personal. If you’re curious about faith, philosophy, or how one of the internet’s pioneers found truth in Scripture, be sure to read Larry’s testimony on his website using the link below!
If you enjoyed this podcast episode PLEASE HELP US SPREAD THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY BY SUPPORTING OUR MINISTRY HERE. 100% of your donation goes to ministry, 0% to buildings!
Apologist Wes Huff and Christian YouTuber Ruslan recently offered their thoughts on the potential pitfalls and benefits for Christians watching “The Chosen.”
While both acknowledged the danger of assigning more theological weight to the series than is appropriate, both also had positive things to say about the multi-season show depicting the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
Wesley Huff, who serves as the Central Canada director for Apologetics Canada, recently became a household name after appearing on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast to discuss the defensibility of the Christian faith and the reliability of the Bible.
On Monday, Ruslan posted a video clip featuring himself and Huff at an event hosted last month by Apologetics Canada. In the clip, Ruslan and Huff take questions from conference attendees.
One attendee asked the pair to weigh in on series like “The Chosen” and “House of David,” which both portray biblical events but also take creative liberties in their portrayals.
Huff began by acknowledging that he knows “people who love ‘The Chosen’ and people who hate ‘The Chosen.’” Before sharing a caution, Huff said, “I can appreciate something like ‘The Chosen’ for what it is in that there’s artistic license.”
“I had a friend who started watching ‘The Chosen,’ and the way he described it to me was that when he started reading his Bible…he started picturing Jonathan Roumie,” Huff said, referring to the actor who portrays Jesus.
“And that concerned [my friend]. And the way that he described it is, he said that when he watched the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies and then he read the books…these thoughts popped up in his mind where he was like, ‘That didn’t happen. That’s not how that narrative goes,’” Huff said. “And he was confusing the source material.”
“And I think that I know people who have really benefited from looking at the artistic license in something like ‘The Chosen,’ and I know people who, in their minds, for better or for worse, have started confusing the source material,” Huff continued.
“And so I think there’s wisdom in pausing and looking at ‘The Chosen’ or any of these other artistic depictions like [‘House of David’], for what they are and not trying to make more of them than they’re actually trying to portray,” Huff argued. “I think there are dangers in that, but I think there’s also an aspect of humanizing it.”
Huff went on to recount seeing a reenactment of the Gospel of Matthew as a child. A narrator read from the biblical text and actors acted it out—though somewhat woodenly.
“I think that’s something where ‘The Chosen’ can make it more organic and can actually contribute to our understanding of Scripture, as long as we’re clear on what the source material is and isn’t,” Huff said.
When asked to add his perspective, Ruslan caveated his answer by saying that he is “absolutely biased” by the fact that he is friends with Dallas Jenkins, the show’s creator and director, and has attended ChosenCon.
“But this is what I would say,” Ruslan said. “I think we have to let people define what they’re creating instead of telling them what they’re creating.”
“And we do this all the time. We want to tell people what they’re making instead of hearing what they’re making,” Ruslan continued. “So they’re not making a Bible show; they’re making fan fiction inspired by the Bible. And they’ve always been transparent about that.”
Ruslan went on to recount that a friend of his was once in a financial pinch and decided to live on protein shakes. After about a week, the friend needed to go to the hospital because of the negative side effects of his diet.
“Protein shakes are not sustenance—they’re supplements,” Ruslan said. “You cannot survive off of supplements.”
“So, ‘The Chosen,’ Christian podcasts, whatever you want to talk about, are not sustenance. They’re not your bread. They’re not what you’re supposed to feast on. They’re just supplements in your journey,” Ruslan continued. “And I think when we mix up the categories, then we do things like reading the Bible and envisioning Jonathan Roumie.”
Ruslan nevertheless pointed out, “The data shows that ‘The Chosen’ is driving people to read the Bible more, not less, which I think is a massive net positive.”
Welcome to episode 61 of the Knight and Rose podcast! In this episode, Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss a new graphic novel co-authored by J. Warner Wallace and his son Jimmy. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We would appreciate it if you left us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Podcast description:
Christian apologists Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss apologetics, policy, culture, relationships, and more. Each episode equips you with evidence you can use to boldly engage anyone, anywhere. We train our listeners to become Christian secret agents. Action and adventure guaranteed. 30-45 minutes per episode. New episode every week.
Episode summary:
Wintery Knight and Desert Rose welcome J. Warner Wallace to discuss his new graphic novel, co-authored with his son Jimmy, entitled “Case Files: Murder and Meaning“. The book tells the story of police detectives trying to catch a dangerous serial killer. We discuss how the story raises questions about human value, morality, identity, and meaning – creating an opportunity for deeper conversations with a wider audience.
Outline and transcript
Here is a transcript of the show provided by TurboScribe AI. TurboScribe AI allows you to translate the transcript into many, many different languages. You can also export the transcript into many different formats, with optional timestamps.
Episode 61:
Speaker biographies
J. Warner Wallace is a Dateline featured cold-case homicide detective, popular national speaker and best-selling author. He continues to consult on cold-case investigations while serving as a Senior Fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He is also an adjunct professor of apologetics at Talbot School of Theology (Biola University), Gateway Seminary, and Southern Evangelical Seminary, and a faculty member at Summit Ministries. J. Warner became a Christ-follower at the age of thirty-five after investigating the claims of the New Testament gospels using his skill set as a detective.
Wintery Knight is a black legal immigrant. He is a senior software engineer by day, and an amateur Christian apologist by night. He has been blogging at winteryknight.com since January of 2009, covering news, policy and Christian worldview issues.
Desert Rose did her undergraduate degree in public policy, and then worked for a conservative Washington lobbyist organization. She also has a graduate degree from a prestigious evangelical seminary. She is active in Christian apologetics as a speaker, author, and teacher.
Are there contradictions between the gospel accounts? If so, how can we trust the central tenet of Christianity–the Resurrection of Jesus? Last week, J. Warner Wallace and his son Jimmy Wallace joined Frank to discuss their exciting new graphic novel, ‘Case Files: Meaning and Murder‘. For this midweek podcast, J. Warner Wallace returns to share how he used his skill set as a detective to investigate the claims of the New Testament gospels and compares his findings to those of atheist/agnostic New Testament scholar, Bart Ehrman.
Together, Frank and Jim answer questions like:
What’s necessary to prove an event occurred in the past?
Why weren’t first-century historians bothered by textual differences found in the Gospels?
Why is it better to have four different gospel accounts vs. one harmonization?
Why would God allow these textual differences?
What surprised Jim the most the first time he read the Gospels as an atheist?
Why do detectives separate eyewitnesses?
When doing detective work, why does Jim prefer it when the stories are “messy”?
Does the evidence always determine the verdict? In other words, why do Jim and Bart come to different conclusions when it comes to the Resurrection of Jesus?
Why is bias against the supernatural a double-standard for materialist atheists?
What’s the best way to test an eyewitness?
If the Gospels are contradictory and can’t be trusted, why do critics like Erhman conclude that much of the New Testament is true and that the disciples really believed they saw the resurrected Jesus?
How are atheists disagreeing with themselves and agreeing with Christians when it comes to alternative explanations for the resurrection?
And so much more! If you normally listen to podcasts on 2x speed you may need to slow it down for this one and take some notes!
If you enjoyed this podcast episode PLEASE HELP US SPREAD THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY BY SUPPORTING OUR MINISTRY HERE. 100% of your donation goes to ministry, 0% to buildings!
I was in my late teens the first time I read the words “apologetics” and “apologist.” At first, I thought these words had something to do with Christians apologizing for misdeeds undertaken in the name of Christ. It didn’t take long for me to realize, however, that apologetics was precisely what I needed at that moment when I was struggling with whether or not the claims in the Bible were believable. As it turns out, even though “apology” and “apologetics” can all be traced back to the same root words, Christian apologetics has nothing to do with saying, “I’m sorry for what I did,” and everything to do with saying, “I have reasons for what I believe.” Apologetics is the church’s reverent, reasonable, and humble defense—through our words and through our lives—of the hope we have in the risen Christ, as this hope is revealed in God’s Word and God’s world.
In today’s increasingly secular contexts, the question is not whether we will do apologetics; it is whether we will do apologetics well. And yet, what does it mean to do apologetics well in a secular age? Here are four biblically-grounded truths to help you to defend your faith today.
1. Holiness provides the foundation for the proclamation of our hope.
The words of Simon Peter in 1 Peter 3:15 can become a cliched bumper sticker for apologetics, but this text is far richer, deeper, and more beautiful than we sometimes recognize. This text seems to have been written to Christians who are beginning to experience social exclusion and perhaps even civic consequences for their faithfulness to Jesus. In this context, the first defense of the faith to which Peter calls them is holiness (1 Pet 1:15–17; 2:9–17; 3:13–17). Our defense of the Christian faith doesn’t end with our holiness, but it must start with holiness.
2. A Christian’s hope is centered in the resurrection—and our apologetics should be too.
Throughout 1 Peter, Simon Peter centers the Christian’s hope in the resurrection (1 Pet 1:3, 13, 21). Sometimes, his focus is on the resurrection of Jesus on the third day; other times, it’s centered on our future resurrection, which the resurrection of Jesus guaranteed. But, either way, resurrection is the foundation of our hope.
So what does this mean for apologetics?
If apologetics is giving a reason for our hope, and hope is centered in the resurrection, the resurrection should be central in Christian apologetics. When the resurrection is not central in apologetics, the practice of apologetics can turn into a bad game of theological trivia, with the unbeliever raising a random series of objections until he or she “wins” by coming up with a question that the Christian can’t answer. When the resurrection of Jesus is central, however, apologetics can never stray far from the gospel, and we respond to the unbeliever’s questions by turning the question toward the cross and the empty tomb.
If you choose to focus your apologetics on convincing an unbeliever that a particular approach to creation is correct—even if you convince the unbeliever that you’re correct—that individual has still not been confronted with the gospel. If you convince someone that there are sound philosophical reasons why a good God might allow evil in the world, and they agree with you but never hear the hope of the resurrection, your defense is a miserable failure. Why? In your passion to defend the truth, you have wandered from a focus on the gospel—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus by which God is reconciling sinners to himself and revealing his reign in the world.
Any apologetic that defines the truth and defends the truth but never delivers a call to believe the gospel is empty and vain. Apologetics is a means that God chooses to use for his glory; the power, however, is not in our apologetics but in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel alone is “the power of God for salvation” (Rom 1:16). That’s what Charles H. Spurgeon was getting at when he said, “Suppose a number of persons were to take it into their heads that they had to defend a lion. … Open the door, and let the lion out! … He would take care of himself. … The best ‘apology’ for the gospel is to let the gospel out. … Preach Jesus Christ and him crucified. Let the Lion out!”
3. There are good reasons to believe the resurrection happened.
But is it even reasonable to believe that the resurrection—this event that, according to Peter, is the foundation of a Christian’s hope—happened? The claim that the corpse of a crucified man made the ultimate comeback 2,000 years ago is a radical claim that defies every ordinary experience of life and death. And yet, I contend that there are robust reasons to recognize the resurrection as an event that took place in history. In the first place, multiple independent witnesses testify together to the truth of this claim. The resurrection of Jesus appears not only in the four Gospels but also in an early oral history recorded by Paul (Matt 27:62–28:1; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; 16:1–2; Luke 24:1–49; John 19:38–20:2; 1 Cor 15:3–7). The details differ, but all of these disparate accounts agree that Jesus died and then returned to life three days later. So does an independent but secondhand report composed in the second century and preserved in a later document known as the Akhmim Fragment. All but one of these reports also include incidental details, such as the claim that Mary Magdalene was the first witness—a detail that was unlikely to have been fabricated in a first-century context where there was systemic bias against testimony from women.
If the Jews of the first century A.D. expected any resurrection at all, it would have been a resurrection of all the righteous at the end of time. They knew that death was typically a one-way street, and they were fully aware of alternative explanations such as post-mortem dreams and hallucinations. And still, somehow, the men and women who first followed Jesus concluded that what they saw three days after Jesus died required the physical resuscitation of a previously deceased person, and they shared the news of this resurrection from one end of the Roman Empire to the other.
What’s more, encounters with the resurrected Jesus reshaped the lives of certain witnesses in such a way that they eventually chose death over any denial of what they proclaimed about Jesus. At the very least, Simon Peter, James the son of Zebedee, and James the brother of Jesus died for what they declared about Jesus. Of course, millions of people throughout history have died for lies that they believed were true—but people do not typically give their lives for a lie if they’re in a position to know that it’s a lie. If anyone might have been in a position to know that the claims of resurrection were fabrications, one or more of these three men would have known. And yet, all three of them went to their deaths still declaring that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Either Peter and the two Jameses were convinced that Jesus was raised and they were mistaken, or they were convinced and they were correct. Based on the evidence, it seems far more likely that they were right than that they were wrong.
4. The Bible is resurrection-shaped.
The term “canon” can be traced back to an early Semitic root that meant “tube” or “reed.” Centuries before the birth of Jesus, this loanword developed into kanon, a Greek term that referred to a reed that grows along the Nile River. So how did a word that refers to a tubular reed end up connected to the books in the Bible? It began when the Greeks began cutting the reeds into specific lengths and using them as measuring sticks. Because these reeds functioned as measuring sticks, the Greek word kanon came to denote any tool that set standards and measured limits. In Galatians 6:16, Paul used this term to signify the all-sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice as God’s standard—God’s kanon—for life and faith. By the fourth century A.D., the meaning of the word “canon” had expanded to describe writings that were recognized as the infallible standard for God’s people.
Now, this doesn’t mean that there was no canon of Scripture prior to the fourth century! Before that time, Christians used other phrases to describe the idea of a list of authoritative books. For example, some Christians referred to authoritative texts as those that were “read publicly in the church” to distinguish them from writings that were read privately for the purpose of personal inspiration and devotion.
When it comes to the New Testament and the supposed “lost Gospels,” the basic criterion for inclusion or exclusion was whether or not the document could be traced back to an apostolic eyewitness of the risen Lord Jesus or to a close associate of these eyewitnesses. The so-called “lost Gospels” were never received as authoritative because they did not include reliable, eyewitness testimony about Jesus; they couldn’t be reliably linked to anyone who had walked and talked with Jesus.
When early Christians were confronted with texts that claimed to come from eyewitnesses, they compared these texts with others that they knew came from eyewitnesses or from close associates of these eyewitnesses. For example, in the late second century A.D., a pastor named Serapion ran across a text that claimed to be a Gospel from Peter. When he compared it to texts that he knew came from reliable witnesses, he realized that this supposed “Gospel of Peter” had been falsely ascribed to Peter, and he wrote these words: “We accept the writings of Peter and the other apostles just as we would accept Christ, but, as for those with a name falsely ascribed, we deliberately dismiss them, knowing that no such things have been handed down to us.” Once God’s promises were fulfilled in Jesus and the eyewitnesses of his resurrection passed away, no further texts could be considered authoritative for God’s people.
But what about the Old Testament? The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have more books in their Old Testaments than other churches. How can Christians today know which canon is correct? Well, these additional texts were incorporated into the Old Testament when a Greek translation of Jewish writings was made. But, according to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus taught from an Old Testament canon that began “with Moses and all the Prophets” (Luke 24:27). As it turns out, the Law of Moses and the Prophets are the first two sections in the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament but not in the Greek rendering of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint. The editors of the Septuagint text that included the Apocrypha placed most of the prophetic texts later in the Old Testament. A few verses later in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus described the Old Testament as a collection that consisted of ‘the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms’ (Luke 24:44). Once again, these words from the resurrected Jesus describe the three-part Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament—a collection that never included the apocryphal books. What’s more, Jesus never cited any apocryphal text as Scripture—and it’s not as if Jesus was unaware of the extra texts in the Septuagint! By the time Jesus began preaching and teaching along the Sea of Galilee, the Septuagint had already been in circulation for more than a century. And yet, even though Jesus cited Old Testament texts dozens of times in his teachings, he never once quoted any apocryphal text. And so, if we place our trust in the resurrected Jesus, it only makes sense to trust the same biblical text that he trusted, and the text that the risen Jesus trusted never included these additional texts.
The canon in your Bible was not decided by the whim of a powerful leader or the vote of a church council. The Protestant Old Testament includes only the texts that the risen Lord trusted, and the New Testament is limited to texts that came from eyewitnesses or close associates of eyewitnesses of this same risen Lord. And so, this canon was determined by nothing less than a resurrection
As we continue our series on arguments for God’s existence featured in this work by philosopher Peter Kreeft, this week we consider the Kalam Cosmological Argument. The most well known defender of this argument is undoubtedly philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig. For those unfamiliar with this argument, I would recommend watching this brief animated video before reading on.
Kreeft explains the argument as follows:
The Arabic word kalam literally means “speech,” but came to denote a certain type of philosophical theology—a type containing demonstrations that the world could not be infinitely old and must therefore have been created by God. This sort of demonstration has had a long and wide appeal among both Christians and Muslims. Its form is simple and straightforward.1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause for its coming into being. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its coming into being.
Grant the first premise. (Most people—outside of asylums and graduate schools would consider it not only true, but certainly and obviously true.)
Is the second premise true? Did the universe—the collection of all things bounded by space and time—begin to exist? This premise has recently received powerful support from natural science—from so-called Big Bang Cosmology. But there are philosophical arguments in its favor as well. Can an infinite task ever be done or completed? If, in order to reach a certain end, infinitely many steps had to precede it, could the end ever be reached? Of course not—not even in an infinite time. For an infinite time would be unending, just as the steps would be. In other words, no end would ever be reached. The task would—could—never be completed.
But what about the step just before the end? Could that point ever be reached? Well, if the task is really infinite, then an infinity of steps must also have preceded it. And therefore the step just before the end could also never be reached. But then neither could the step just before that one. In fact, no step in the sequence could be reached, because an infinity of steps must always have preceded any step; must always have been gone through one by one before it. The problem comes from supposing that an infinite sequence could ever reach, by temporal succession, any point at all.
Now if the universe never began, then it always was. If it always was, then it is infinitely old. If it is infinitely old, then an infinite amount of time would have to have elapsed before (say) today. And so an infinite number of days must have been completed—one day succeeding another, one bit of time being added to what went before—in order for the present day to arrive. But this exactly parallels the problem of an infinite task. If the present day has been reached, then the actually infinite sequence of history has reached this present point: in fact, has been completed up to this point—for at any present point the whole past must already have happened. But an infinite sequence of steps could never have reached this present point—or any point before it.
So, either the present day has not been reached, or the process of reaching it was not infinite. But obviously the present day has been reached. So the process of reaching it was not infinite. In other words, the universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its coming into being, a Creator.1
Dr. Kreeft also highlights 3 common challenges level against the argument.
Challenge #1Christians believe they are going to live forever with God. So they believe the future will be endless. How come the past cannot also be endless?2
Response
The question really answers itself. Christians believe that their life with God will never end. That means it will never form an actually completed infinite series. In more technical language: an endless future is potentially—but never actually—infinite. This means that although the future will never cease to expand and increase, still its actual extent will always be finite. But that can only be true if all of created reality had a beginning.3
Challenge #2
How do we know that the cause of the universe still exists? Maybe it started the universe going and then ceased to be.4
Response
Remember that we are seeking for a cause of spatio-temporal being. This cause created the entire universe of space and time. And space and time themselves must be part of that creation. So the cause cannot be another spatio-temporal being. (If it were, all the problems about infinite duration would arise once again.) It must somehow stand outside the limitations and constraints of space and time.
It is hard to understand how such a being could “cease” to be. We know how a being within the universe ceases to be: it comes in time to be fatally affected by some agency external to it. But this picture is proper to us, and to all beings limited in some way by space and time. A being not limited in these ways cannot “come” to be or “cease” to be. If it exists at all, it must exist eternally.5
Challenge #3But is this cause God—a he and not a mere it?6
Response
Suppose the cause of the universe has existed eternally. Suppose further that this cause is not personal: that it has given rise to the universe, not through any choice, but simply through its being. In that case it is hard to see how the universe could be anything but infinitely old, since all the conditions needed for the being of the universe would exist from all eternity. But the kalam argument has shown that the universe cannot be infinitely old. So the hypothesis of an eternal impersonal cause seems to lead to an inconsistency.
Is there a way out? Yes, if the universe is the result of a free personal choice. Then at least we have some way of seeing how an eternal cause could give rise to a temporally limited effect. Of course, the kalam argument does not prove everything Christians believe about God, but what proof does? Less than everything, however, is far from nothing. And the kalam argument proves something central to the Christian belief in God: that the universe is not eternal and without beginning; that there is a Maker of heaven and earth. And in doing so, it disproves the picture of the universe most atheists wish to maintain: self-sustaining matter, endlessly changing in endless time.7
What do you think of this argument? Please share in the comments below!
If I had to pick the strongest defender of Christianity operating today, I would pick Dr. Stephen C. Meyer. His recent book “Return of the God Hypothesis” defends three arguments for a Creator / Designer of the universe. But there have been some criticisms of those arguments. In this conversation, Justin Brierley asks Dr. Meyer to respond to those criticisms.
Here is the video:
Here is the description:
Justin Brierley interviews controversial philosopher of science Dr Stephen Meyer, about his recent book “Return of the God Hypothesis”. Stephen shares the latest advances in the field of “Intelligent Design”, ranging from design inferences that can be drawn from the origin of the universe, the fine-tuning of the universe, the information content of the living cell, and even from attempts of atheist materialists to try to avoid the God Hypothesis!
And here are the topics, with timestamps:
00:00:00 Coming up… 00:00:40 Introduction 00:01:08 Darwinism is in trouble 00:05:42 Isn’t I.D. God of the gaps? 00:09:03 What about the Dover School trial? 00:13:21 Has the I.D. stigma changed? 00:15:57 Big Bang points to design? 00:23:44 Objections to beginning & cause of the universe 00:30:04 Is there a bias against God? 00:32:31 Fine-tuning points to design? 00:37:14 Puddle objection to design 00:42:38 “C.R.A.P.” objection to design 00:45:40 Multiverse defeats design? 00:52:42 About The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God podcast 00:54:29 Own-goals from trying to avoid design 00:56:29 Origin of life points to design? 01:03:56 Dawkins is wrong about life arising by chance 01:09:15 What about naturalistic models of life? 01:12:23 Aesthetic objections to I.D. 01:15:47 Paul Davies’ views on I.D. 01:19:53 Conclusion 01:23:46 Next!
If you watch this, leave a comment and let me know what you thought of it.
In podcast, J. Warner Wallace examines several objections to the argument for God’s existence from the appearance of design in biological organisms. Even atheists such as Richard Dawkins admit biological molecular machines “appear” to be designed. Can this appearance be explained by purely natural forces?
In an age of growing skepticism and hostility toward the Bible, are there any good reasons to take it seriously? Last week, Dr. Andy Steiger, president of Apologetics Canada, joined Frank to tackle the problem of evil and to explore the ultimate purpose of suffering. This week, Andy returns to discuss, ‘Can I Trust the Bible?‘—a brand-new video series he co-created with Wesley Huff, defending the Bible’s reliability. In this episode, Frank and Andy dive into pressing questions like:
Should Christians engage with secular platforms?
How has Wes Huff’s debate with Billy Carson and recent interview with Joe Rogan influenced Apologetics Canada?
What is Bart Ehrman getting wrong about New Testament manuscripts?
How do we know the Pauline epistles were written early?
What did plagiarism look like in the ancient world?
Are there actual “mistakes” in New Testament manuscripts?
Why aren’t the Apocrypha and Gnostic gospels in the Bible?
Are extra-biblical sources for Jesus more reliable than the Bible?
Be sure to check out Wes and Andy’s new video series along with even more great content on the Apologetics Canada website, including infographics, new podcast episodes, online courses, recommended resources for children, and MUCH more!
If you enjoyed this podcast episode PLEASE HELP US SPREAD THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY BY SUPPORTING OUR MINISTRY HERE. 100% of your donation goes to ministry, 0% to buildings!
A presuppositionalist claim is that the Christian worldview (CW) is necessary in order to make sense of human experience. However, even if the CW is consistent, coherent and explanatory, how would that prove that it is connected to how things truly are in the world? What if the external world can be organized by the CW only subjectively and pragmatically but not actually or truly? Although the CW offers answers to important questions pertaining to origin, virtue, deliverance and purpose, what makes the CW true? What if Christianity is merely a philosophical ideal that provides a way of organizing experience but does not actually bring us in touch with reality? How might we prove that our minds are actually designed to correspond with the external world, and that the CW and none other must be true in order to avoid philosophical skepticism?
Before addressing the question, what might be helpful is saying a word or two about (a) context, (b) sin’s influence on the mind, (c) apologetic goals, (d) antithesis and common ground, (e) proof vs persuasion, and (f) transcendentals.
Context:
Our apologetic methodology must be informed by the biblical contextual reality in which it operates, otherwise it will oppose the worldview it is intended to vindicate. In other words, in order to argue for a coherent Christian worldview, our methodology should obviously cohere with the same. This means treating unbelievers according to what the Bible declares about them and not according to what unbelievers admit about themselves!
Unless our apologetic is informed by Scripture, the Christian apologist will operate with the same autonomous mindset of the unbeliever. In order to avoid epistemological inconsistency, the Christian apologist must adopt a Reformed understanding of man’s fallen condition as it relates to morality and intellection, and apply it to the apologetic endeavor. Once we adopt a Reformed understanding of man’s fallen condition as it relates to the human mind and moral affections, we can begin to self-consciously treat unbelievers from God’s perspective, as covenant breakers who seek to psychologically escape from their knowledge of God while denying they know him in conscience through the things that are made. Hosea 6:7, Romans 1:20, 5:12
Sin and apologetics:
All men are without excuse, not for inviolable non-belief but for willful and intellectual unbelief. It is the truth of what is known of God that is suppressed in unrighteousness. Consequently, the mind’s suppression of God is of itself a perpetual unrighteous-act. Indeed, there is a moral dimension to how unbelievers misuse their natural mental capacities that were designed to love and obey God, but instead are marshaled to deny the unbeliever’s covenantal obligations toward their maker and sustainer.
Whereas all Christians understand men sin, Calvinists have particular appreciation that men sin because they’re sinners. Moreover, consistent Calvinists take things even one step further. The Reformed apologist not only understands that the fall affects the moral image of God in man; he is also keenly attentive to the fact that man’s natural image of God is fallen too. Due to sin, not just the unbeliever’s religious affections are totally depraved but his reasoning is in willful, sinful, and emotional opposition to God (and by extension to the Christian witness). Consequently, man’s fallen rebellion manifests itself not just in deeds of the flesh but of the mind too, which the Bible teaches is hostile to God apart from saving faith. Romans 8:7
Given the unbeliever’s intellectual enmity with God, the goal of Christian apologetics is not to persuade the unbeliever to believe what he already knows, but to expose what he has decidedly chosen to deny. After all, if the goal of apologetics is to persuade men that God exits, then the defect of unbelief is rooted not in man but in God’s failure to communicate! Man would not be in a broken relationship with his creator and sustainer if he is in need of being persuaded that God exists. Man would merely be invincibly ignorant – a passive non-believer rather than an active unbeliever who intentionally rejects his creator and sustainer.
Desire vs Goal:
Although our desire is that all men confess the truth and be saved, our apologetic goal is always achievable. Therefore, the goal of apologetics must be apart from the results God may or may not grant. The goal is that in obedience to Christ we destroy arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God. 2 Corinthians 10:5 Consequently, a Reformed apologetic happily complies with prayers that the Holy Spirt would grant repentance unto life to anyone who has been shown to be hoping against hope by willfully denying not just Christ as the only way back to the Father, but Christ as the only way back to understanding the Father’s world!
Antithesis and common notions:
With appreciation of the stark antithesis between believers and unbelievers, a Reformed Christian apologetic makes use of divinely-established points of contact with unbelievers, which are at the presuppositional level of one’s worldview. Apart from recognizing the common grace basis for shared points of contact with unbelievers, the requisite tools for apologetic engagement are often treated simply as neutral tools for gospel discourse as opposed to the common battleground that is to be reclaimed for Christ’s sake. Consequently, rather than calling the unbeliever to give an account for the requisite tools of rational interchange – e.g., logic, memory, universals and particulars, moral absolutes, etc. – the foolish apologist surrenders these (shared) common notions, treating them as neutral ground and perfectly intelligible apart from the Christian worldview or any reference to God as a necessary precondition for their reliability and usefulness. Proverbs 26:4
Proof vs persuasion:
God’s general revelation to all men declares his glory and grounds all human knowledge. Psalm19:1-4 Of course, unbelievers deny this claim and, unfortunately, popular apologetic methodologies cater to their lie.
An appeal to the authority of Scripture to prove all men know God is not invalidated because men refuse to acknowledge God’s voice in Scripture or general revelation of the Divine. After all, when men are converted, the arguments from Scripture don’t all of a sudden become sound. Rather, by the grace of God man’s unbelief is overcome as he accepts the truth that was previously denied. Analogous to this is the skeptic who refuses to accept that his senses put him in touch with reality.
Consider the following:
* The proof that there is a tree in front of the skeptic is constant.
* The skeptic’s perception of the tree is another constant.
* What is not constant is the willingness or unwillingness to accept the truth.
Upon acceptance of the obvious, the tree is not all of a sudden proved to exist anymore than the skeptic’s perception gets altered by acknowledging the truth. Rather, upon accepting that an actual tree is seen, the skeptic’s unwillingness to accept the truth is overcome. The proof hasn’t changed or become better than it was originally. Instead, proof has given way to persuasion!
Now, obviously, a direct appeal to the Scriptures to prove the Christian worldview is fideistic and our apologetic should not beg crucial questions in this way. Notwithstanding, our apologetic must not deny what Scripture teaches us regarding the unbeliever’s condition with respect to his a priori knowledge of God.
Transcendentals, not fideism:
We are to reason according to Scripture without direct appeals to Scripture. With this stricture comes two foundational points for the presuppositionalist. First, the apologist should not cater to the unbeliever’s false claim about his knowledge of God. The second point is the apologist does well to reason indirectly from Scripture for the Christian worldview by employing transcendental argumentation.
Transcendental arguments (TAs) pertain to preconditions for the possibility of the existence of some basic or common experience. That is, TAs put forth necessary precondition(s) without which a generally accepted experience is unintelligible. Another distinguishing feature of TAs is that preconditions for such basic or common experiences are not learned by experience. The preconditions pertain to what can be known apart from experience.
So, for instance, what must be true for there to be a reasoned rejection of God or even unsophisticated unbelief? Well, a number of things! There must be logic for one thing. But what must be true for there to be laws of logic? The presuppositionalist’s claim is that it is impossible for logic to exist without God’s existence. No God, no logic. Logic, therefore, God.
Given the unbeliever’s suppression of the truth of Scripture, the presuppositional apologist defends the transcendental premise that logic presupposes God by performing internal critiques of opposing worldviews, showing that (a) they cannot account for logic etc., while also showing (b) Christianity not only can account for logic but, also, that to argue against Christianity presupposes conditions for rationality that are only possible within the Christian worldview!** It would be a mistake, however, to think that one-by-one refutations imply that the conclusion of TAG (God exists) and the justification for the transcendental premise rests upon inductive inference. By repeatedly refuting opposing philosophical ideologies the Christian apologist is merely acknowledging that the unbeliever refuses to bend the knee to the self-attesting word of God. Since unbelievers will not accept the truth claims of the Bible, the only thing the Christian can do is refute unworthy and hypothetical competitors, which hardly implies that a formulation of any given TA has an inductive aspect, or that the transcendental premise within such an argument is inferred only after having successfully refuted a statistically sufficient number of opposing worldviews.
It has been said that although TAs are powerful apologetic tools, they under deliver because of the inductive aspect of defending the strong modal claim of the transcendental premise. Accordingly, it’s been suggested that presuppositionalists should dial back the claim to God probably exists. But that challenge completely misses the point. At the very least, what makes probability possible? It can’t ultimately be a conceptual scheme that makes actual probability possible if the intelligibility of the possibility of any conceptual scheme presupposes God’s existence. Moreover, probability presupposes the uniformity of nature, which a mere conceptual scheme cannot guarantee.
God or ~God:
Lastly, we don’t have to refute an “infinite number“ of “explanations” for the intelligibility of logic to defend God’s existence by the impossibility of the contrary. Either God is necessary for the intelligibility of logic or not. Those are the only two possibilities given the law of excluded middle. Moreover, the refutation of the common feature of any non-revelational epistemology is the refutation of all such epistemologies given the common feature. It’s not a matter of God vs Naturalism, Idealism, Atheism, Platonism or any number of X-isms. It’s not a matter of a, b, c, but a matter of a or ~a. God or ~God reduces to ~autonomy or autonomy, where autonomy always reduces to philosophical skepticism. Similarly, the assertion that p “it is possible that an undiscovered fact or worldview may be the necessary precondition for intelligible experience” presupposes the intelligibility of actual possibility, which further presupposes God’s actual existence! We simply can’t get around what Scripture teaches, in the beginning God.** Genesis 1:1, John 1:1
Closing:
Because the unbeliever will not acknowledge a common creator and sustainer of men and things, he lives on borrowed capital while operating as if the rational thoughts of the human mind should have any correlation to the way in which the mind-independent world rationally behaves. Only the Christian worldview, with its revelatory epistemology that is both consistent and coherent, explains that God has created both the mind of man and the external world, while providing the necessary fruitful connection between the two so that knowledge is possible and dominion can prevail.
* So, what about the controversial claim that God is a necessary precondition for logic? We can ultimately defend our knowledge of the premise by appealing to the absolute authority of Scripture. Of course, the unbeliever rejects that authority; nonetheless that the unbeliever is dysfunctional in this way does not mean that an appeal to Scripture is fallacious to justify one’s knowledge of the premise. It is critical at this juncture for the Christian to distinguish for the unbeliever (a) the source of his justification for his knowledge that God makes logic possible, which comes from the Holy Spirit’s work of illumination through the self-authenticating Scriptures, from (b) the proof that God makes logic possible. How we know x is not an argument for x.
**For a fuller treatment of the subject with respect to objections, along with a critique of classical apologetics and evidentialism, go here.
Huff and Rogan discussed when Rogan brought up the anti-Christian prejudice among elites, listening audiences are increasingly open to consensus-bucking narratives. Apologists should discard inadequate tools regardless of their utility, but there isn’t even a shallow pragmatic excuse left for keeping them now. The future of apologetics is maximalist.
Christian apologist Wesley Huff’s recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience is a conservative evangelical’s dream come true. For years, it seemed like wishful thinking that Rogan would even become aware that smart evangelical apologists existed, let alone invite one on his podcast as a guest.
Stephen Meyer broke into his bubble in 2023 through their mutual friendship with astrophysicist Brian Keating, but Meyer is unusually well-placed for such opportunities as a philosopher of science with many secular connections. When it comes to more church-focused Christian apologetics, the pond is small indeed and well outside Rogan’s normal sphere of interest. Until now.
The story of how Huff found himself on the show is a true viral media age parable. The first domino fell when Huff agreed to debate Billy Carson, an entrepreneur, TV personality, and self-styled expert in ancient civilizations—emphasis on “self-styled.” Predictably, Carson beclowned himself. (Among other embarrassing moments, he seriously attempted to argue that Jesus was never crucified.)
After the debate was released, Carson suddenly threatened legal action unless all clips from it were taken down. Of course, Huff knew this was pure theater since Carson was not only a public figure but a public American figure threatening to sue a Canadian.
It’s childish, I know, but it is entertaining to watch one’s opponents squabbling amongst themselves. Particularly when we witness some of our most effective opponents emerging on the right side, even if only this once.
Progressives Are The Most Dangerous Fundamentalists There Are
Atheists often characterise Christians, especially evangelicals, in fundamentalist terms. Evangelicals are seen as religious bigots who pick up their Bibles and put down their brains. We are assumed to have an anti-science outlook and judgemental attitudes, and never listen to reason.
That progressive ideology has all the hallmarks of the worst kind of fundamentalism has long been obvious, demanding as it does a blind belief and refusal to listen to contrary arguments. Opponents of progressivism are judged not as mistaken but as morally bad people. It is interesting that a leading atheist organisation devoted to countering Christianity has been exposed as having cult-like tendencies.
Atheist Crusaders The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is an American non-profit organisation founded in 1978 to support atheists and agnostics in their struggle against the dreaded Christians and to campaign for ‘the separation of church and state’.
The FFRF have been diligent in pursuing their aims and boast of a ‘robust legal department’. They go after what they see as any encroachment of religion into the functioning of the state. This includes such grave societal dangers as prayer at public events, the saying of the Lord’s Prayer in a kindergarten, the display of religious symbols on public property and overturning a law declaring Good Friday a public holiday.
Along the way they have gathered a number of high-profile atheists as members and supporters. Cracks, however, are beginning to show. Three leading scientists have recently resigned as honorary board members. They have run afoul of a cause which touches the heart of ideologically blinkered progressives.
The progressive movement is wildly unscientific and places ideology above science. Evolutionary biologists Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins and cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker all cited the ideological capture of the organisation by the transgender movement.
No-one Grovels Like a Progressive Last November LGBTQ+ activist lawyer and FFRF Fellow Kat Grant wrote a column for FFRF titled ‘What is a Woman?’ Grant concluded with scientific cluelessness but blind certainty: ‘A woman is whoever she says she is.’
As an evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne felt compelled to rebut this unscientific codswallop and on Boxing Day wrote on FFRF’s blog that, contrary to Grant’s claims, ‘the biological definition of “woman” [is] based on gamete type.’
The result was predictable. The trans activists immediately launched an attack on FFRF with a vengeance: how dare they publish such a hateful article? Like a good progressive organisation the FFRF caved in immediately. Coyne’s comments were pulled the next day.
FFRF’s grovelling apology reads like a Maoist ‘struggle session’ from China’s cultural revolution of the 60s and 70s. Strangely the apology for publishing an article by an atheist scientist began with an attack on Christianity: ‘We are acutely aware that Christian nationalists have cynically manipulated the LGBTQIA-plus issues.’ Somehow Christians have to be criticised; perhaps we are the unseen forces who work behind the scenes manipulating world events and Coyne, Pinker and Dawkins are our puppets.
The authors of the apology, co-presidents of FFRF, went on to detail the consistent LGBT activism of their organisation, condemned the enemies of the trans movement both foreign and domestic, and concluded by repudiating Coyne’s views and admitting that publishing the article ‘was an error of judgment’ and ‘does not reflect our values or principles’.
The Worst Kind of Fundamentalism Coyne immediately published an open letter in which, like a reasonable scientist, he said that he was ‘simply promoting a biological rather than a psychological definition of sex’, and couldn’t fathom why this should be controversial.
In a damning condemnation of how FFRF had acted Coyne concluded, ‘gender ideology which caused you to take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (“a woman is whoever she says she is”), apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology.’
Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker agreed and submitted his own resignation, saying that FFRF has become ‘the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics’. According to Pinker the FFRF ‘has turned its back on reason’.
unborn children don’t possess any more morally significant traits ‘than mice’.
Richard Dawkins resigned shortly after, describing Grant’s original article as ‘silly and unscientific’. He went on to accuse the FFRF of acting in ‘unseemly panic when you caved in to hysterical squeals from predictable quarters and retrospectively censored that excellent rebuttal’.
Dawkins has form on this issue. He has been opposing trans activists for some time, and he doesn’t pull his punches. In January 2024, he vehemently responded to an article defending gender ideology, stating: ‘This ridiculous article (shame on the once-great Scientific American) ignorantly misunderstands the nature of the sex binary.’
He added: ‘You may argue about “gender” if you wish (biologists have better things to do) but sex is a true binary, one of rather few in biology.’ For this heresy Dawkins had his 1996 Humanist of the Year award rescinded.
They Are Not Allies Don’t be fooled into thinking that Dawkins, Coyne and Pinker have seen the light. They continue in the forefront of championing truly repulsive applications of practical atheism. Responding to a woman concerned about what to do if she learned during pregnancy that her baby had Down’s syndrome, Dawkins said it would be ‘immoral’ not to have an abortion.
Steven Pinker has gone further: he is of the opinion that laws against infanticide are difficult to defend. According to Pinker, unborn children don’t possess any more morally significant traits ‘than mice do’.
Jerry Coyne is no better. He has bemoaned that the vestigial Christianity remaining in the West has prevented the legalisation of ‘the euthanasia of newborns, who have no ability or faculties to decide whether to end their lives’.
Before welcoming Coyne, Pinker and Dawkins as co-belligerents, remember that they are long-time champions of the post-Christian society which has made the transgender social contagion possible. We can use them as examples of science rebutting progressivism, but they are not allies.
Nevertheless, their internal skirmish has given us some fun.
The world’s most popular podcaster gave an opportunity for the gospel that apologist and biblical scholar Wesley Huff took with both hands. It will be one of the largest audiences for the gospel in history.
The Joe Rogan Experience is the world’s most popular podcast. On average, 11 million listeners tune into every three-hour episode. In terms of numbers, it leaves TV shows and traditional media sources in the dust.
Not the Bee quipped that “Joe Rogan just dropped a new podcast with Christian apologist Wesley Huff and it is so full of truth and grace. More people might hear the Gospel in this single interview than any other interview/speech in human history.”
The author went on to conclude, “There’s a Holy Ghost-led vibe shift happening in America. It’s harvest time.”
Another headline reads, “Rogan episode likely to be furthest reaching gospel broadcast in history”.
That the podcast will be the greatest-ever presentation of the gospel in history may be a little overstated. But there’s no denying that Joe Rogan has an incredible reach and influence that makes other content creators insanely jealous.
And there’s also little doubt that this podcast (over 2.5 million views in only one day) could well be a “Holy Ghost-led vibe shift”. God can use anyone – imperfect that they may be – to get his message out.
(Please note, Rogan often uses explicit language.)
Rogan’s Journey Towards Jesus
Joe Rogan’s spiritual path has certainly changed trajectories over the past couple of years. In 2019, he interviewed the world’s most well-known atheist, Richard Dawkins, and commented, “I’m a huge fan of your work.”
In February last year, in an interview with NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, Rogan remarked – almost accidentally – “We need Jesus. I think for real.”
The contrast between the 2019 and 2025 Rogan is quite stark.
The Joe Rogan Experience’s podcast episode #2252 with Wesley Huff certainly continues that incremental pathway towards a biblical worldview.
Miraculous Healing and the Pursuit of Truth
In the podcast, Rogan quizzes Huff about how he came to study biblical texts and early Christianity.
Huff’s answer was first personal, then academic.
Just before his twelfth birthday, Wes suffered a case of the flu, which led to his body’s immune system attacking the nerve endings at the base of his spinal code.
There was no communication in his nervous system between his legs and his brain. This rare neurological condition left him paralysed from the waist down.
Doctors gave him a small chance of recovery. But a much greater probability of permanent paralysis.
Exactly one month after his initial immobilisation, he woke up (quite normal) and walked over (quite astonishing) to his wheelchair – with no evidence of any muscle atrophy (even more incredible).
Wes credits this as “a miraculous recovery that the doctors themselves said they had no medical explanation for.” As Rogan remarks, “That’s crazy! Because I’ve broken limbs before and had them in casts. And just in the six weeks you have a cast on, you have massive atrophy.”
Huff continued, “Something happened that I can’t explain on naturalistic terms.”
But the event didn’t lead to an immediate all-in approach to Christianity. As Wes explains, “But how do we go from that [a miracle] to saying, ‘Well, okay, this worldview [Christianity] is correct’?”
During his later teenage years, he did “a great deal of study and soul searching” over a period of about a year and a half. He came to the conclusion that Christianity is true.
Then, while at university, Huff was challenged about the authenticity of the Bible and Christianity by atheists, Muslims, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Wes realised, “If I’m wrong about the Bible, if the things [those sceptics] were saying were true, then it did undermine what I believed. And I needed to take those things seriously.”
Combining his curiosity with the pursuit of truth, he dove deeply into studying how the Bible came to be and the evidence that it records historical reality.
His enthusiasm for studying the Bible, its early manuscripts and early Christian history has never subsided.
Rogan Impressed and Engaged
In previous years, Rogan would have attempted to steer the conversation away from Jesus and the Bible. But this is 2025. The Rogan of today is different from the one of old.
Rogan is so impressed by Huff’s depth of knowledge that he revealed, “I’ve probably watched 20 hours of your stuff over the last couple of weeks, and you’ve spent a lot of time on this.”
“This is not a casual cursory examination of these texts and religion. This is a long, long journey. That’s what’s particularly exceptional and really interesting to me. Because I’m always fascinated by people who have really, really gone down the road.”
Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus
At the 2 hour and 18-minute mark of the podcast, Huff begins explaining to Rogan why he believes that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and rose from the grave.
Rogan believes that “there’s something else” going on in the universe that is more than matter and energy.
But then he incoherently followed that up with, “It’s very difficult for anybody who thinks of themselves as an intelligent person who’s secular [as Rogan would identify himself], to even entertain the possibility that somebody died and came back to life.”
But Rogan has conceded there’s something supernatural about the world we live in. That being the case, it does not follow that supernatural events – such as the resurrection of Jesus – can not happen.
It was a logical mistake that Huff gently pulled the strongly built podcaster up on. “I get that”, he replied, “but we’ve already talked about the fact that we don’t think that the only thing that exists is matter and motion.”
The reality is that there is much evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.
There’s no doubt that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the ancient homeland of the Jewish people. Then, individuals close to his inner circle claimed to see him alive. Individuals who could have denied the resurrection and been much better off for it – but refused to recant what they had “seen and heard” (1 John 1:1).
In addition, the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – were “written in the lifetime of the eye-witnesses.” Matthew and John were Jesus’ disciples and travelled with him, observing the things he did and said. Mark and Luke were not eyewitnesses, but Luke interviewed those who were (Luke 1:1–4) and Mark relied on Peter – one of Jesus’ closest companions – when compiling his account.
Huff also explains that the idea of a crucified god was so ridiculous in the first-century world (as it is today), that there’s only one reasonable explanation for this. Jesus was indeed crucified.
Both Christians and pagans believed it to be so. The former believed it was the most remarkable act of God to ever occur in history. The latter thought it made great content for redicule – as the Alexamenos graffito demonstrates.
The etched depiction in plaster made somewhere around AD 200 mocks a Christian called Alexamenos. Portraying Jesus with a donkey’s head, the Roman graffiti translates as “Alexamenos worships his god.”
The Alexamenos graffito
The Alexamenos graffito enhanced
As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).
There are also clues within the biblical text that reveal the authors were accurately reporting the facts. One such example is that women were the first witnesses to the resurrected Jesus.
As Huff points out, women were not regarded as reliable witnesses in the first-century world. So why does it have women – not men – present at the empty tomb? Because the biblical authors were truthful in writing what happened.
But such is not the case for the Gospel of Peter – a document thought to be from the second century, certainly not written by Peter, and with many historical inaccuracies. The Gospel of Peter is uncomfortable with women being the first witnesses to the empty tomb. So, it conveniently has ‘the right people’ – Roman and Jewish officials – camping out in front of the tomb. But Huff correctly points out that there was no way Jewish priests would be residing near a dead body during a Jewish holy season (Passover, in this case).
The Gospel of Peter has clearly rewritten history to make an embarrassing story more palatable to the culture of the day. The four biblical Gospels take a very different path.
It is to this that Rogan remarks, “Wow, that’s what’s so interesting about trying to interpret this stuff. You have to think about it in terms of the culture of the time.”
Rogan is Searching
Rogan is clearly searching. He finds people who think they “know for sure” that when you die, that’s it, as arrogant.
Plus a little silly. “How could you know what you don’t know?”, he questions.
Further, he finds the atheistic view of life – which he once firmly held – cannot explain the wonder of life. “Just the fact that you exist at all is so bizarre and so spectacular,” he explains.
Rogan also understands the modern pressure to conform to secular standards. “The problem is that there’s a social credit amongst academics, in particular, that’s ascribed to a person who’s atheist.
“‘He’s brilliant, he doesn’t believe in myths.’ I get it. I get why there’s social pressure in that regard. But to not look at the universe itself, this creation engine of planets… just the bizarreness of the epicness of it all, and to not wonder if maybe you have a very narrow perception of what this whole thing is about” – now seems too fantastical for Rogan to take seriously.
He continues, “I think a lot of what it means to be a human being in a meaningful way is not measurable. Most of it. Love and friendship and community.”
“Whatever love is, whatever good is, it’s a very real thing and it seems to not exist – certainly in the volume – in other animals. Their perception of life and death is very different to ours. So that leads me to [ask] why. Why is our version of life so much more rich and complicated than any other being that exists? What is it?”
It is to these questions of ultimate meaning that Huff responds, “That’s ultimately the questions that we should be asking. In terms of, you matter more than you are matter. There’s something going there.”
“There’s something going on with all of us”, Rogan replies. We kind of know it and we kind of don’t know it.”
Huff Shares the Gospel
Wes Huff could have left the discussion at Greek biblical manuscripts and historical evidence for the death and resurrection of Jesus.
But he did not let Rogan off the hook. At the three-hour and five-minute mark, he asks Rogan directly, “What do you think of Jesus?”
To which Rogan replies somewhat vaguely, “Was he an actual person that was the Son of God? And is it important? I don’t know. And what does it mean?”
“I know a lot of hardcore Christians who are some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet in your life. So it does work. If you do live like a Christian, and you do follow the principles of Christ, you will have a richer, more love-filled life.”
To which Huff agrees. But it’s more than Christianity somehow ‘works’. Huff takes issue with Jordan Peterson, who talks about Jesus – but more about Jesus as an abstract projection than a flesh and blood man whose feet trod the dusty Roman roads of Judea and Galilee.
To Peterson, Jesus is perhaps no more than a great moral example. “But I think that ultimately, Jesus condemns moralism. If Jesus is nothing more than a moral example, then you can save yourself, and you don’t actually need a saviour.”
This comment alone seemed to be an “I get it!” moment for Rogan.
“The law is like a mirror. It shows you how dirty you are”, Huff continues. “In that sense, if Jesus is a moral example, it actually misses what Jesus actually said about what his purpose was. You can’t do enough to actually live up to the standard God holds you to. So, if you keep striving, you’re actually going to wear yourself out and be exhausted.”
Rogan and the World’s Search for Meaning Continues
It will be fascinating to see the impact of podcast #2252.
One thing’s for certain. This won’t be the last time Rogan discusses Christianity on his show.
Rogan concludes with, “Listen Wes, this is such an awesome conversation… the good thing is that a lot of people became aware of your work.”
To that, the Daily Declaration issues a hearty ‘amen’.
We might even say we’re witnessing a Holy Ghost-led vibe shift happening before our eyes.
Lately, I’ve noticed that some of the most famous atheists are regretting their long war against Christianity. People like Richard Dawkins spent their lives warring against Christianity. And now that they’ve achieved their goal of diminishing Christian influence, they don’t like the results. They don’t like the Islam. They don’t like the wokeness. They don’t like the transgenderism. But they caused it.
Celebrated atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins stepped down from the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) on Saturday after the atheist group made clear its allegiance to transgenderism over biological reality.
Dawkins resigned after the foundation censored an article from a fellow scientist who pointed out that sex is, in fact, immutable and biological, and rejected the pseudo-spiritual claim that one can choose their “gender,” The Telegraph reported.
Dawkins accused the organization of caving to the “hysterical squeals” of cancel culture after FFRF pulled the article and called its publishing of it a “mistake.” Dawkins resigned after two other scientists, Jerry Coyne and Steven Pinker, left the organization over the ordeal. The pair accused the foundation of pushing an ideology with the “dogma, blasphemy, and heretics” of a religion, according to the report.
The resignations can be traced back to a piece published to FFRF’s Freethought Now! website and written by Kat Grant called “What is a Woman?” The piece argues against the biological reality of womanhood and instead claims that “a woman is whoever she says she is.”
After they pilled the article by the atheist scientist arguing for biological reality, we got this from the FFRF leaders:
“Despite our best efforts to champion reason and equality, mistakes can happen, and this incident is a reminder of the importance of constant reflection and growth,” co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote.
“Publishing this post was an error of judgment, and we have decided to remove it as it does not reflect our values and principles. We regret any distress caused by this post and are committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again,” they added.
No one would say that people like Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Steve Pinker were stupid people. What they are is foolish. These are the most foolish people on the planet. They spend their entire lives embracing the lie of atheism. They denied all of the scientific evidence for theism, such as the origin of the universe, the cosmic fine-tuning, the origin of life, explosions of biological complexity in the fossil record, irreducible complexity, habitability, etc.
And what did this advocacy against scientific evidence and reason itself get them? It gets them the Islamic dominance, wokeness, and transgenderism that they now claim to dislike. It would be like someone talking and talking about how much they believe in early retirement, but they way they prepare for retirement is by spending all their money on lottery tickets. And then they act surprised when they get the failure that their actions virtually guaranteed.
Believers must regain the use of the mind for God’s glory:
Some cynics might think that my title offers an oxymoron. ‘What, do Christians actually think?’ Yes, I get that: too often believers do not use their minds. And some might even relish that sad reality. Too many of them think that Romans 12:2 says this: “Be transformed by the removing of your mind.” But it in fact says this: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
The biblical Christian should never be in that camp. The importance of the mind, of thinking, of truth, of reason, and of the intellect is stressed throughout Scripture, and is found in the pages of church history. And Jesus told us what the greatest commandment is: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34; and Luke 10:25-8 – all drawing from Deuteronomy 6:4-9).
The truth is, one of the things I most often say to Christians (or at least want to say to them) is this: ‘You really need to start using the mind that God gave you instead of letting it go to waste.’ So many believers need to begin to think, and to think carefully, for God’s glory.
Here are 30 quotes by 17 Christian authors (out of so many) stressing the importance of loving God with our minds and with the totality of our being:
Harry Blamires
“There is no longer a Christian mind.”
“My thesis amounts to this. Except over a very narrow field of thinking, we Christians in the modern world accept, for the purpose of mental activity, a frame of reference constructed by the secular mind and a set of criteria reflecting secular evaluations. There is no Christian mind; there is no shared field of discourse in which we can move at ease as thinking Christians by trodden ways and past established landmarks.”
William F. Buckley
“The purpose of an open mind is to close it, on particular subjects. If you never do – you’ve simply abdicated the responsibility to think.”
G. K. Chesterton
“[Beware] a hardening of the heart with a sympathetic softening of the head.”
“The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid.”
William Lane Craig
“Evangelicals have been living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence. The average Christian does not realize that there is an intellectual war going on in the universities and in the professional journals and scholarly societies. Christianity is being attacked from all sides as irrational or outmoded, and millions of students, our future generation of leaders, have absorbed this viewpoint. This is a war which we cannot afford to lose.”
“It’s not just Christian scholars and pastors who need to be intellectually engaged with the issues. Christian laymen, too, need to be intellectually engaged. Our churches are filled with Christians who are idling in intellectual neutral. As Christians, their minds are going to waste. One result of this is an immature, superficial faith. People who simply ride the roller coaster of emotional experience are cheating themselves out of a deeper and richer Christian faith by neglecting the intellectual side of that faith. They know little of the riches of deep understanding of Christian truth, of the confidence inspired by the discovery that one’s faith is logical and fits the facts of experience, of the stability brought to one’s life by the conviction that one’s faith is objectively true.”
Jonathan Edwards
“All truth is given by revelation, either general or special, and it must be received by reason. Reason is the God-given means for discovering the truth that God discloses, whether in his world or his Word. While God wants to reach the heart with truth, he does not bypass the mind.”
Os Guinness
“A leading problem in Western evangelicalism [is] anti-intellectualism. Anti-intellectualism is a disposition to discount the importance of truth and the life of the mind.”
“Intellectualism is not the answer to anti-intellectualism. Our passion is not for academic respectability, but for faithfulness to the commands of Jesus”.
“Privacy is harder than ever when everyone is invited to be linked in, connected and transparent to others, but it matters. Reading books is time consuming, but it matters. Reflection is easily drowned out when life is fired at us point-blank, but it matters. Independent thinking is hard when the social media reinforces group-think, but it matters. Thinking for ourselves is difficult when it is so much easier to download an expert opinion, but it is essential to the freedom of our own agency, so it matters. Conversations with an iron-sharpens-iron quality are rarer when minds seek carbon-copy approval from others in their own bubble, but they matter. History is more crucial than ever when the relentless modern focus is on the present and the future, but it matters. The courage to hold unfashionable convictions is more difficult when social media mobs give the thumbs-up or thumbs-down like a Roman Emperor, but it matters.”
C. S. Lewis
“God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of being a Christian, I warn you: you are embarking on something that is going to take the whole of you, brains and all. But fortunately, it works the other way round. Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book [The Pilgrim’s Progress] that has astonished the whole world.”
“And because our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason (when we perceive that liking is due but cannot feel it). No emotion is, in itself, a judgment; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.”
“Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“In view of the nature of this kingdom, we must learn to think in a new way. This is the great problem of the Christian life, and this is, indeed, the theme of all the New Testament epistles. All these epistles have one great object, and that is to teach us how to think in a Christian manner. The fact that you are born again does not mean that you automatically think as a Christian. If it did, there would have been no problems in the churches at Rome or Corinth or anywhere else; indeed, you would never have needed a New Testament epistle.”
“The great trouble in the Christian life is ever that we must re-learn how to think. The old way of thinking is of no value here; we are in an entirely new realm. So that is why the Apostle says, at the end of 1 Corinthians 2, ‘We have the mind of Christ’ (v 16). We need this mind, and we must learn to cultivate and to develop it and to let it govern our thinking on all these various problems and difficulties.”
J. Gresham Machen
“The church is perishing today through the lack of thinking, not through an excess of it.”
Charles Malik
“The problem is not only to win souls but to save minds. If you win the whole world and lose the mind of the world, you will soon discover you have not won the world. Indeed it may turn out that you have actually lost the world.”
“The greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough.”
J. P. Moreland
“The role of intellectual development is primary in evangelical Christianity, but you might not know that from a cursory look at the church today. In spite of this, if we are to have Christ formed in us (Galatians 4:19), we must realize the work of God in our minds and pay attention to what a Christlike mind might look like. As our Savior has said, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’ (Matthew 22:37). To do this, we cannot neglect the soulful development of a Christian mind.”
Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God by Piper, John (Author), Noll, Mark A. (Foreword)
John Piper
“I don’t want to overstate the case. It’s not about going to school or getting degrees or having prestige. It’s not about the superiority of intellectuals. It’s about using the means God has given us to know him, love him, and serve people. Thinking is one of those means. I would like to encourage you to think, but not to be too impressed with yourself when you do.”
“Thinking is indispensable on the path to passion for God. Thinking is not an end in itself. Nothing but God himself is finally an end in itself. Thinking is not the goal of life. Thinking, like nonthinking, can be the ground for boasting. Thinking, without prayer, without the Holy Spirit, without obedience, without love, will puff up and destroy (1 Cor. 8:1). But thinking under the mighty hand of God, thinking soaked in prayer, thinking carried by the Holy Spirit, thinking tethered to the Bible, thinking in pursuit of more reasons to praise and proclaim the glories of God, thinking in the service of love—such thinking is indispensable in a life of fullest praise to God.”
“Warfield taught at Princeton Seminary for thirty-four years until his death in 1921. He reacted with dismay toward those who saw opposition between prayer for divine illumination and rigorous thinking about God’s written Word. In 1911 he gave an address to students with this exhortation: ‘Sometimes we hear it said that ten minutes on your knees will give you a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. “What!” is the appropriate response, ‘than ten hours over your books, on your knees?’”
Fulton Sheen
“The hardest thing to find in the world today is an argument. Because so few are thinking, naturally there are found but few to argue. Prejudice there is in abundance and sentiment too, for these things are born of enthusiasms without the pain of labour. Thinking, on the contrary, is a difficult task; it is the hardest work a man can do – that is perhaps why so few indulge in it.”
R. C. Sproul
We “live in the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Western Civilization”.
“For the soul of a person to be inflamed with passion for the living God, that person’s mind must first be informed about the character and will of God. There can be nothing in the heart that is not first in the mind. Though it is possible to have theology in the head without its piercing the soul, it cannot pierce the soul without first being grasped by the mind.”
“The Word of God can be in the mind without being in the heart; but it cannot be in the heart without first being in the mind.”
John Stott
“Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service. If we do not use the mind that God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality and cut ourselves off from many of the riches of God’s grace.”
Dallas Willard
“To serve God well we must think straight. Crooked thinking, intentional or not, always favours evil. And when the crooked thinking gets elevated into orthodoxy, whether religious or secular, it always costs lives.”
Ravi Zacharias
“The danger of a simplistic faith is simplistic answers.”
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