Latest / Gospel Talks Podcast / #85 - A Real, Live Conversation With An Atheist, Was Evidence The Problem? You Tell Us.

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#85 - A Real, Live Conversation With An Atheist, Was Evidence The Problem? You Tell Us. · Gospel Talks Podcast

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I've got something really different for you guys this week.
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On Gospel Talks podcast, we were invited on a show called Apologetics Live.
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It's a call-in show.
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And I was on the show and somebody called him whose name was Landon.
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Landon is an atheist.
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And Landon actually started engaging me a little bit on the show and got to start to ask him some of the questions that the Exchange Bible Study actually asks of people.
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The host of the show, Andrew Rapoport,
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is an apologist and so you'll hear him doing some apologetics but I'm gonna interrupt as you guys hear this conversation played out a little bit to explain.
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Right off the bat I want you to know Landon grew up in a great Christian household.
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He grew up evangelical, conservative evangelical with the same worldview that pretty much I have.
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Yet here in this show he calls in a full Arden
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atheist and I want you to see something really interesting towards the end of the discussion that I'll interrupt and chime in on but without further ado I want you to enjoy
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this conversation with an atheist here we go
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I have this question around the idea of abduction.
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So for anyone that's not a philosophy nerd, um we have these modes of reasoning.
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We have deduction, which is how we infer conclusions from known facts, induction, which is how we try to make predictions about what will happen based on known facts and past
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experiences.
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uh And we have abduction, which is
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commonly called the inference to the best explanation.
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And I think it hopefully offers a kind of interesting angle to apologetics, which is that when we're talking about worldviews, I think we have a limited set of facts, an incomplete
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set of facts.
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uh And so there's always, we're sort of playing this weighing game of
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what explanations are convincing and which aren't.
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And I just wonder what you guys think about the idea.
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If someone, if I'm saying, hey, I don't find Christianity convincing, not because I have some issue with the values I think God has or expresses or some sort of like moral issue
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or something, but that I just kind of on its face don't find
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the explanation.
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I don't find it to be a good explanation for the world as we see it, or at least a convincing one.
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Okay, let's pause right there.
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I Am as lost as much as you are when Landon begins to lay out his argument because I'm really not familiar with this argument I can understand it basically bottom line of what
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he's saying is the Christian worldview the Bible doesn't seem to be the best explanation for the world we see I'm gonna come in
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later because Landon's actually gonna ask Andrew, he's gonna say, I'd like to hear what George has to say.
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So you're gonna hear that answer in a little bit.
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But I want you to hear the apologetic answer and I want you to hear my answer and they're both, know, Andrew's answer is great.
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There's nothing wrong with his answer but I want you to see the relational approach with which I approach.
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Even though I'm not an apologist, I'm not the smartest guy in the room, I probably have the lowest IQ of these three dudes.
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But here we are and we're just using that exchange method of
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pointing them back to a relationship.
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It's about introducing them to a person.
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So here we go.
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And I could be mistaken.
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You may know more, but I, I think the first I've known of this was a book referred to as why I became an atheist by John Lufus.
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I don't know if that's what you're referring to.
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Okay.
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Uh, he, he, he makes the, argument, uh, in his book,
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And he basically laid out a couple of points.
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he basically makes the case of, know, like, why should we accept, you know, any worldview other than through evidence?
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Okay.
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And he looks at them and says, basically, if I look at all the different worldviews, naturalism has a better evidence for the way the world works than Christianity.
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And so his conclusion is, well, then we should be a naturalist over Christianity.
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So I didn't know if you were approaching it from him and there's different arguments.
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He makes a problem of evil, uh you know, things like this that they think Christianity doesn't really have a good answer for.
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I think the way I approach it simply is this is if let's step into their
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the worldview of the person who claims to be an atheist.
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God doesn't exist.
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You and I land in are just chemical reactions.
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There's no morality to it.
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It's not right or wrong.
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Because morality would be something immaterial.
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Right?
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Now you have a problem because if there is no immaterial world,
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you are having by this this abduction, you're having to rely on reasoning to reason which worldview is the best.
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And yet reasoning is an immaterial thing which you can't have.
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I you can't take two chemical reactions and create reasoning.
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Well, yeah, in this situation, I would just say
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at least contextually to my question, it's not because, I find another worldview, another full account of cosmology and metaphysics and ethics and knowledge and intelligibility and
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whatever else, or solid.
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uh it wouldn't, I would say, I would say the materialism point isn't necessarily a refute to my angle, but it's more of sort of what do you say to someone who finds
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Christianity specifically unconvincing, not necessarily in favor of a different.
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Yeah.
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Well, yeah, I guess first we would get to the point of saying, okay, we, so you're saying, okay, of the other worldviews out there, which why would Christianity be more convincing
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than others or others more convincing Christianity?
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Would that be?
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I'm just saying in isolation.
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Okay.
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What do you say to someone who just says,
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Christianity is interesting, maybe I'm very familiar with it, I just don't buy the explanation.
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As far as I can tell, just genuinely am not convinced that true.
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Okay, pause.
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So Andrew makes a really great argument, counter argument to this worldview and has this little back and forth with Landon.
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And at the end of it, Landon basically says, yeah, I'm just not convinced of the Christian worldview.
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This is where Landon is going to bring me in.
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So let's keep playing.
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No, sorry, maybe I miscommunicated before.
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do hold this view.
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eh I'd be interested what George said.
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I think ultimately it's not, my question is not about the uniqueness of Christianity.
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Like I could buy that explanation that Christianity is unique and maybe even prefer it among the menu of religions.
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But on the specific point that, but I still just don't think the story is true.
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ah
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If there's a way to just address that question where I'm not saying because y is better than x, I'm just saying I hear the story, I understand it as well as I can, and my
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intuition is that that doesn't seem to fit whatever ingredients I have.
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So I may answer a bit differently, but George, since he asked it to you,
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anything you want to respond with.
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Landon, it's a really great question.
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It begs for a solution like Hockham's razor.
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What's the best, simplest solution for the world we're looking at with our physical eyes?
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um You could read the Bible and
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I wouldn't imagine that somebody who read the Bible with a fair mindset and gave it a fair shake would come to the conclusion that it's a bad explanation for the circumstances
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around this.
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But you're asking, what's the best explanation?
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And I think to your point, you have to try it.
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You know, it's like, how do you end up buying a car?
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Do they convince you of the car before you've driven it and tried it?
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um Or is there an aspect of you should experience it if you're really going to make a full decision?
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And that's one of the things that I think is a really honest presentation to this question is, you know, one of the reasons that I'm convinced of my faith is because um I know Him,
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I've read the scriptures, I've tried it.
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I know the difference in fulfillment in my soul.
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I know the difference in eternal security in my soul.
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These are all experiences.
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Sometimes Christians shy away from saying, you you ought to have an experiential moment.
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And I would agree, experience is not everything, feeling is not everything.
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Our feelings and emotions are not the best judge of the validity of a worldview because your feelings fluctuate.
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They go up and down.
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That's why you need truth.
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That's why you need truth.
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So truth is a key ingredient.
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Truth is a key ingredient, but truth will make a difference in your life.
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So if you try it and you get to know Him, you know, I put it like that very specifically because you've been listening, you know how relationally I caveat this whole thing.
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The whole worldview to me is an inclusion into God's family.
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Not that I'm going to be co-equal with any member of the Trinity.
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That's Mormonism.
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Um, what I'm, what I'm presenting is I was created a creature that's designed to have a relationship with the creator.
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You, you will know if it's real, if you try it.
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I mean, that's one of the things I would encourage you to do is go through a Bible study, sit down with a Christian, find somebody who's not going to try to convince you
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academically, find somebody who will introduce you and see what you think of the experience in God's Word.
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uh God's Word is a living document.
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It is not like any other book you will ever handle in your life.
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The Holy Spirit promises to use it in your heart as you read it to either draw you closer or push you away.
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And that's a pretty scary dynamic.
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You know, sometimes we have to deal with very tough passages in Scripture.
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But either after the experience, you'll be more hardened against it or you'll be drawn towards it.
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And the difference is a work of God that I can't control as a person, because honestly, I'll never convince you.
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You know how I know that, Matthew 16.
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uh Jesus asked the disciples, who do people say that I am?
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That's what you're asking.
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I mean, really, the question behind your question is, is Jesus?
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And the disciples go, you know, some people think you're Elijah, some people think you're John the Baptist reincarnate.
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ah Some people think you're a great prophet.
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He said, no, no, no, no.
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Who do you think that I am?
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And Peter pipes up, he's like, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
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And then Jesus says something very important to him that we sometimes gloss over.
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said, blessed are you, Simon Varjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who's in heaven, which means it's not a matter of convincing.
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I could never convince you.
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I have to show you.
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It's like, I could convince you my car is awesome.
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That means nothing to you.
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I could show you that my car is awesome and then you'd say, you're a liar, it's a Prius, it's not awesome.
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you know, that's really how you know is you go meet him, you know.
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All right, pause right there.
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So I still don't know up to this point in the conversation that Landon actually grew up a Christian.
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So I'm speaking to him like any other unbeliever and I'm basically saying to him, hey, you need to meet Jesus.
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You need to have the experience, uh the on the road to Emmaus experience with Jesus and get to know him.
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ah And so I can't convince you and it's not about the evidence because the evidence is stacked high and if this amount of evidence is not enough for you,
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no amount of evidence is enough for you.
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But Landon now is about to reveal that he grew up in a Christian household and we're going to continue the conversation.
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So here we go.
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Yeah, yeah, my background is Is Christian I grew up very happily Christian my life so that's a long story we don't have time to And it's not a which hopefully is somewhat
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apparent of my disposition, but I Didn't come out of it with the bad taste in my mouth either um Still actually very affectionate towards it in a lot of ways but
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I do kind of just find myself, think, that place of gradually sort of convinced that I just genuinely just don't know that it's true.
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Let me ask this, know, thinking, jumping off of what George was saying.
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You grew up in a Christian home is what you had said, right?
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Yep.
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And so I'm going to.
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I don't want to put words in your mouth so you feel free to correct me anywhere you think there needs to be.
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Would it be fair to say that you tried Jesus and didn't find it compelling?
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that be, would that be fair?
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No, personally, I found it very compelling.
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Okay.
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which I think
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I don't remember your guest's name last time.
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He's like, you're a bit of a unicorn in his experience.
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I would be a son of the internet, which I know is a rough bunch.
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But yeah, personally, I had an amazing childhood.
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I grew up in a great Christian community.
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My parents were full time missionaries.
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I.
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My bingo card of young evangelical.
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missionary kid was very full and happily so was a worship leader for a long time.
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I was an elder in a church.
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I was et cetera, et cetera down the line.
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again, it's a long story to sort of go into how that kind of gradually got dismantled, but yeah, I think part of why I come to
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at from some of these angles, maybe push back on some of those stereotypes, which to be fair, very often do apply because I just know in my own case, however unusual my case
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might be, that wasn't really my or doesn't at least from my standpoint feel to be my.
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Yeah, yeah.
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I mean, ultimately.
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Ultimately, what it comes down to Landon is.
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you and I and George, right?
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All are going to be accountable to the God that created us.
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know, look, I'll give, I'll say that you and George are probably more moral than me because I live with me and know me and I sin a lot, but the, huh?
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I said, yeah, you're probably right about George.
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We both agree on that one.
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But the thing is, is that it ultimately comes down to, like what George was saying earlier in the show, what do we do with Christ?
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Right.
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um That's really the issue.
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know, if we realize that
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God Almighty became a man to die in our place.
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We're forced with one or two decisions.
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We accept that we know that to be true, accept that, or we reject it.
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And ultimately it becomes an issue of pride, right?
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You can kind of describe it different ways, but ultimately it comes down to pride.
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It's either we want to live life on our own way or we want to pay for our own sins or we want to have control over our life.
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ultimately it comes down to it's either we're going to submit to God or try to live our own way.
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We're either going to as
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George would say, have a relationship with him because of what he's done to make a way of that relationship.
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Or we're going to shut that door saying, no, you're going to accept me on, on my standard, on my, uh, my way.
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And that I think really becomes the ultimate issue.
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All the, all the arguments and evidence we can, we can go back and forth on.
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But ultimately the real issue is.
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you and I have a sin problem.
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Maybe not George so much as you and I, but he still has one, but not as bad.
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um Right.
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But ultimately that's the real issue.
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You and I don't have an evidence problem.
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We have a sin problem and we don't like that.
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I understand that your theology says otherwise.
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guess what I would try to do is just advocate for
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the least potential existence of non-resistant.
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All right, so pause.
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So Andrew's about to come back to Landon and say, okay, so what evidence?
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What's the evidence that would convince you?
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I'm gonna come in after their back and forth and say, there would be evidences that would convince me to the negative, that Jesus is not King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
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But there isn't an evidence out there like that, that convinces me to the negative.
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And what Landon is saying is there isn't an evidence that convinces him to the positive.
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because really it's not about evidence.
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Here in a second, I'm about to get down to the heart issue.
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I'm gonna ask Landon one question that is the main question we ask everybody who goes through an Exchange Bible study, and you're not gonna wanna miss it.
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So, last pause before I do the outro and end the episode, here we go.
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What evidence do you think would convince you to your satisfaction?
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I mean, I could think of hypothetical things.
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I mean, think there are maybe areas in which the world would need to be different or there need to be some kind of explanation for why things are a certain way that would somehow
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connect the dots for me to why Christianity is an explanation for some of those.
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So I mean, I don't, I don't know that we choose what
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convinces us on some level, but I think there is in principle at least evidence that would convince me.
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um
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I just have not come across the cumulative case at least that has brought me that.
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But don't you, I mean, if you can't quantify what that would be, don't you think that, you know, or let me ask you as a question, do you think that if I gave evidence that you would
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just move the gold post possibly and say, well, that's not convincing enough, give me more when now I need this or that?
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I well, I think I could have reasons why certain bits of evidence are not.
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convincing or I think there's a better explanation for them and I understand that may hold the perception of resistance of some kind but I I mean what would convince you is like a
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pretty broad like if I asked you what would convince you that God's not real
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It's a pretty broad landscape of possibility.
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You could think of hypotheticals, you know, like the moon splits open and this other God comes out and says, you could think of some fantastical story.
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I think best I can say is speak for myself.
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In my assessment, as well as I can.
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Landon, I would have one thing that would convince me that God is not real.
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If they found Jesus' body, I'd be convinced.
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How would you know it was Jesus' body?
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Well, if you were convinced it was Jesus' body, that would convince you.
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Because I mean apropos the same question to whatever evidence would convince you How would you know that that thing is even a thing but all that aside?
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um There are plenty of things that would totally crumble the Christian world Christian worldview I mean if they come across archaeological evidence like the Dead Sea Scrolls of
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a different set of documents that totally contradict the Bible Okay, I'd be convinced if they came across
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evidence that the Bible was manufactured or there are things in the Bible that were stated out of order in terms of history, like kind of like how you have steel swords in the Book
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of Mormon.
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so, steel swords at a time in America where steel was not even technology invented in world history yet.
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If there were things like that, there would be plenty of things.
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I mean, even the names in the Bible.
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There was a study done by a guy
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Dr.
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Peters, he wrote a book, basically he studied all the names of ancient Middle East during the time frame that Jesus was living and found that the most common names in the Bible
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were the most common names and the ossuaries for the dead people of that whole century.
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You know, there's a lot of ways that I've been convinced that I could have been convinced the other way, because every evidence for my worldview could have been an evidence against
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my worldview.
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There are critics of the worldview nonetheless, but I would say there's no substantial evidence.
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uh And as a matter of fact, you find the most secular atheists in Israel using the Bible as a map for where to dig.
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So even the guys who don't believe it, who are naturalists, would say, yeah, but it's a very accurate record of hints on where to go to find stuff in Israel.
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And so again, I'm not convinced by the lack of evidence.
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You're probably not convinced by the evidence.
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What I would say is there's one thing left off your bingo card that's really important Which I never I never heard you say and maybe maybe you did but I never heard you say you
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actually know Jesus Christ
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That was on the bingo card.
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We'll go into the nuance of that, but.
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No, I mean, do you have a relationship with him right now?
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Until you don't know him.
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Currently no, because I do not believe that the Jesus you're talking about
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Well, 1 John chapter 1 says, if you don't know Him, you never knew Him.
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Sure, yeah.
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I'm not giving you my opinion.
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I'm telling you what a book that was written 1900 years ago, 2000 years ago says.
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I'm not giving you my opinion on it.
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I'm just telling you, I mean if we're talking about the New Testament worldview, right, we got to use the text.
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We got to use the evidence, the codex that, you know, the whole worldview is based on.
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And the codex says, if you don't know him, you never did.
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They went out from us because they were never of us.
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So that's why I think
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There's a big relationship question left open on your bingo card there that, I love the way you put it because you're are, this is a fascinating thing.
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I'm not fascinated in the sense of like a scientific experiment because to me you're a lot more than that.
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You're a person.
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You have a soul.
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God created you for purpose.
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You're looking for answers.
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You're valuable to God.
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Jesus died for you.
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Jesus loves you.
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You've heard all these things before.
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But for me, I really believe it's true.
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So the way I'm going to approach this is, well, I ought to have a love for Landon, and I ought to take time for Landon, and I ought to expose Landon to as much biblical truth as
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possible, even if he already knows it but doesn't know it,
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All right, last pause, because we're ending the episode.
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After this, Landon gets off.
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I'll drop the link to the full video if you're interested in the description below.
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But if you watch the video version of this recording on this show that Exchange got to go on, you'll see Landon actually bury his head a little bit in his chest when I really kind
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of create that fork in the road that Jeff talks about so often.
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and basically say, hey, do you know him?
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And I mean, he just goes, no, he does not know him.
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This is the main problem.
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The world does not know him.
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He came to his own and they did not recognize him.
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So of course, spiritual blindness towards Jesus is the problem, but
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Jesus says in John, if the Father does not draw them, they won't come.
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And so this is what it is a little bit to engage somebody with these questions.
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wish so badly, Landon does not live in Arizona, not that I know of.
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I wish so much he was in my locale and I could meet with him and have coffee and do an exchange Bible study.
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I actually sent Landon my email address and offered to do an exchange Bible study over Zoom.
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So we'll see what the Lord does with that.
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Be praying for Landon and pray to the Lord of the harvest.
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This is how we go out into the harvest.
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These are the kind of conversations we need to have.
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This is what it is to have a conversation of crisis and point somebody to Jesus.
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Now I didn't have the time to build a relationship, the rapport, the trust that we so often talk about.
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And now you see why that relationship, rapport and trust is so important because how much better would that conversation have gone if Landon knew I loved him.
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All this was was an internet conversation.
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You could have way more advantageous conversation than this one.
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If we pray, seek the lost and point them to Jesus.
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So pray to the Lord of harvest that he would send forth laborers.
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We don't have a harvest problem.
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We have a labor shortage.
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Love you guys.
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We'll see you next week.