Latest / Brandon Fogal Evolution / #105 - Why Rhett McLaughlin Lost His Faith—Deconstructionism

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#105 - Why Rhett McLaughlin Lost His Faith—Deconstructionism · Brandon Fogal Evolution

• 0:00
  All right, let's just address the monkey in the room. Why is this show called evolution?
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  We're going to talk about that. And also we're going to talk about Rhett McLaughlin
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  went on to the Alex O'Connor podcast within reason.
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  And he talked about his coming away from faith, why he no longer be why he no longer is a Christian.
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  And it I think it all stems from deconstructionism.
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  And it also stems from evolution itself. So we're going to talk about that My
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  name is Brandon Fogle. This is Evolution.
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  Let's get into it. So we're going to take a look at the sit-down that these guys had together.
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  Rhett McLaughlin, and this really struck me because he came away from,
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  he was heavily involved with Campus Crusade,
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  which is an organization that works with college students and spreading the
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  gospel and spreading the faith.
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  And I wouldn't say Campus Crusade brought me to Christ, but I became a Christian
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  after going there, so maybe I did. I don't know.
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  But I was invited there, and then that's when the whole kind of snowball effect
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  happened and I became a Christian.
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  Rhett McLaughlin, on the other hand, he was involved in it for a long time,
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  lived in North Carolina, and moved out west.
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  But he talks about, before he moved out to California, that the seeds were already
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  planted, why he stopped believing in Christ. And...
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  I would say the linchpin, just listening to this conversation,
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  because I'd never listened to him before. I'd never heard of him before, I don't think.
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  I think it started when he came to
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  the understanding that this universe is billions of years old and the dinosaurs
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  and evolution is what kind of really set him off to go down that rabbit hole
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  of why Christianity is not true and why he no longer can believe this lie.
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  I don't want to put words in his mouth, you know, but I did listen to the entire
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  thing, and it was very eye-opening to hear his side of why he no longer believes.
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  We're going to take a look at it and see a little bit about,
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  just so you have an idea of who he is, and I'm sure a lot of people out there
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  do know who he is, but he talks about once he got away from the standpoint of this universe is maybe,
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  I don't think he gave it much thought beforehand.
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  This is more of a long-term universe. It's been here for ages and we are just
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  mechanisms of evolution and we grew up.
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  People are just the next thing in the whole line of events from animals.
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  And I honestly want to get into understanding more evolution because I know,
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  from a general basic understanding of it myself.
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  And I could say like kind of talking points about it and say like what I think it is.
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  But let me just, first of all, say what, why I call this, this show evolution
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  in the first place. I like the word. I like the word. I like the name.
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  I had to pick something and I, I honestly, I wanted to find something.
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  I don't know what it is about the word I like, but I was always drawn to flagrant.
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  If you've ever heard of that show, and I love listening to those guys over there,
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  and I love that name, and that name was taken, so I picked evolution. That's why I like it.
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  I don't know what it is, but also as a Christian, my perspective on evolution
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  is not that we came from apes or anything like that. I believe we came from.
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  Our first parents, Adam and Eve, you know, God made them. And then that's how we came into existence.
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  And it wasn't crossbreeding between different animals and all that.
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  And I don't believe in that.
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  But I also believe that everything belongs to us as Christians.
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  And I know that might sound arrogant and I don't want it to sound arrogant at all.
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  You know, that's why put yourself in the perspective, in the viewpoint of somebody
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  else who believes something different than you as a Christian,
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  if Christianity is correct,
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  if it's correct, then Christians, people who believe in Christ will inherit the world, you know?
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  And I know that sounds silly to some people, but that's how it is.
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  And in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul's writing, you know, and he says,
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  and again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise and they are futile.
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  So let no one boast in men for all things are yours.
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  And then he says, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or
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  death or the present or the future, all are yours and you are Christ's and Christ is God's.
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  And I might just be snacking and snatching something out of context and just
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  throwing it up on the wall, you know, and it's easy to do that.
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  It's easy to do that. But that's if evolution, you know, I don't believe in
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  the whole macro evolution that we evolved from all these species,
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  but there is a true, you could say transformation that is taking place with
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  all Christians and just the way that we are made up, the way that we are wired,
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  we are being rewired daily,
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  being conformed to Jesus's image.
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  That's what the Bible says, you know, if you just think of it that way,
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  and that there will be a macro evolution that takes place in the next age,
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  that we will be buried and that as any crop is grown, it's buried as a seed and it.
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  Comes to life as a new plant. Well, you know, and that, and Paul talks about
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  that in first Corinthians 15.
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  So I don't want to sound arrogant at all about that, but I mean,
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  that's my worldview. That's my opinion.
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  And I am snatching the word evolution and I am Christianizing it, I guess.
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  So I just like the word. I honestly like the word. So I am the monkey in the
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  room. I am the monkey in the room. So I get, I get it. So I get it.
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  So, but I want to talk about, let's take a look at But they talk about a lot
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  of stuff when he's talking to Alex, how he came away from the faith.
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  And he says it all started with the concept and the ideas of evolution and him
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  researching it and saying, if this is true.
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  And then his last thing that he gave up on was the resurrection.
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  And so it's like, if all this is true, how can I believe this one lie of Jesus coming out of the tomb?
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  But he talks about in this portion of it, how he wants to rescue Jesus from
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  the hands of people that misuse him.
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  And I would say, and he says like how a lot of the things that Jesus said were
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  great and wonderful, you know, and they're good moral teachings.
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  But you can't take anything that we're taking from an understanding of who Jesus was.
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  It's we're getting it from the authors of the New Testament.
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  And if you want to say all the other Gospels that came afterwards,
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  they stole and took from the New Testament, those Gospels.
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  They took the writings and understandings, and then they used it for their own
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  purposes and made God or made Jesus this Gnostic deity who came into the world.
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  And they just used him for that. So...
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  If we want to take a portion out of the New Testament and try to understand
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  who Jesus is, it becomes very picky choosy what we want when we start saying
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  he had good moral teachings, but then we just skate over some of the other things he said.
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  Jesus talked more about hell than anyone.
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  And that's why Bertrand Russell, why I am not a Christian, his viewpoint when he wrote that work.
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  It really made sense because he said, Jesus, we can't just say he's a great
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  moral teacher because he brought hell onto the table in a huge way.
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  And that wouldn't have been an easy thing to get on board with.
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  I don't, nobody wants to think about hell. Nobody wants to talk about hell,
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  but he talked about it more than heaven.
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  Jesus talked about it more than heaven, but we can't just be picky choosy on certain things.
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  And I think that's what, when you fall away from Christianity,
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  that's what you're left with.
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  You want to take some of the things that fit into your worldview at this time,
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  but you just want to throw the rest out as just nonsense and fabricated lies.
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  As opposed to, if we're going to take it, we got to take it for what it is.
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  Because the authors that are writing it, they're not just making it up as they go along.
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  They're trying to record something. And all of it, you could say it's an agenda.
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  They're writing it for a purpose, but they delivered the whole thing of what
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  Jesus, his whole life, they, they, what they got across from what they were
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  trying to pull across from Jesus's life and what they were putting forward in front of everybody.
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  They took the whole man. They didn't take just bits and pieces.
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  And it's like, I, it's almost thievery to try to take bits and pieces out of
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  what we want to believe of Jesus and, and not take the rest of it.
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  And then it becomes, we are the ones that the arbiters of what is true.
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  As opposed to what did those authors say? All right, so this is a short clip
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  from this podcast. It was great. It was wonderful. And I love the whole thing.
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  Let's take a look at what Rhett has to say about the moral teachings in him
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  rescuing Jesus from people who want to misuse him.
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  And like some of these ideas are really beautiful, you know,
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  like from a moral standpoint, like the things that Jesus asked you to do,
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  being selfless, being service oriented.
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  You know, caring about the poor and the needy, not just being about the,
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  your own accumulation of your possessions, recognizing the emptiness in the
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  accumulation of possessions.
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  Like these are beautiful ideas that I subscribe to today.
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  So I think that I think part of my interest is this, like, I want to,
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  I want to, I want to rescue Jesus from the hands of the people are using him
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  for evil. Yeah. Because.
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  Okay. So right there, there's so much into it.
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  And he goes through like step by step of how he, and it was, it was tough for me.
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  And I know he, he's, he gives this example of what he would say is a magic show.
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  You know, there's a person that we love to be odd. We love to be like the mystery,
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  you know, what's, what's happening, you know, it's awesome.
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  But then there's the person that's explaining the magic trick as well.
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  And he's at that point in his life and seeing the magic trick for what it is.
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  It goes along with the parable of Jesus talking about the seed,
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  the sower who went out to sow seed.
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  We don't think about that that much, you know, unless you're a farmer these
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  days, but the, some of the seed goes into good soil.
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  Some of it goes into rocky soil. Some of it goes into growing up near thorns
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  and some of it gets plucked up right away by the birds, you know.
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  If I was to be honest, and I hope I am always honest, whenever I first became
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  a Christian, let me back up a little bit.
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  Whenever, before I became a Christian, I got into whole philosophy and understanding
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  and deconstructionism, deconstructing everything where everything becomes meaningless.
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  And it took me to a very, very dark place.
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  I became a Christian. You know, I had my road to Damascus experience,
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  and then I had to reorient and re-understand everything that I had in this world.
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  And whenever I first became a Christian, immediately I felt just constantly being attacked.
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  You know, that was when the Da Vinci Code came out, you know,
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  and I had to put that book down.
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  I couldn't read anymore because it was just tearing apart what I was trying
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  to understand in Jesus and making sense of this whole experience that happened.
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  It was constantly just nipping at me and just I had to put the book away of
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  the Da Vinci Code. That was when that whole thing came out and all that.
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  I would say I'm a stronger Christian now that now I can actually hear these
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  things and not be just completely dismantled.
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  So it's, it's the difference between the seed of God, the Bible,
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  the word, the word of God, it goes out, it gets planted everywhere and it grows
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  up depending on the soil of the heart that it is landing on.
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  And it says that some people can believe for a while and then fall away.
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  Some, some of it, like I would say, right when I became a Christian,
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  I felt the birds just quickly coming up and just snatching it up,
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  just grabbing it from my heart and just making me doubt everything and just like, oh my gosh, what?
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  I was in a very unstable point in my life when I first became a Christian because
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  I didn't have a strong understanding of what the Bible actually says.
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  I just became a Christian and then I figured it all out later.
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  I didn't understand what grace was. I was asking the stupidest questions ever.
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  I didn't understand what forgiveness was. I became a Christian.
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  And then I realized I needed to be forgiven, all this kind of stuff.
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  It was all like upside down and turned around. It didn't make sense to anything.
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  So anybody can, like Rhett, he grew up in the church like a lot of people do.
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  He even propagated Christianity, heavily involved in Campus Crusade.
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  And then he experiences this when one thing falls from, it just pulls one card
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  out from the house of cards that was his faith and everything came crashing down.
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  And I can, I get how that can happen, but it's like, if Jesus is who he is,
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  you know, if Jesus is who the Bible is, and I don't think we can just snatch
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  Jesus out of the Bible and then remake him how we want.
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  The Bible gives it how it is. You know, it shows, it just becomes,
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  for me, it comes very tough when somebody can pick and choose verses and certain
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  characteristics about Jesus, as opposed to this guy, he was like the liar, lunatic Lord thing.
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  He was either a liar, lying about what he was saying. He was either crazy.
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  You could say, was he not making himself out to be God? Was he not really making him out?
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  He implicitly was, you know, whether he was explicitly saying it,
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  and I would argue he was explicitly saying it at times, but either way,
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  he was implicitly making it clear that I am Yahweh, the God of Israel in human
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  flesh standing before you.
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  That was what, there was a progression in the understanding of the apostles'
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  understanding of who this guy was. it didn't make sense immediately.
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  But the liar, lunatic Lord, he was either a liar. He was lying about it.
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  He was either crazy or he was who he said he was.
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  And that we can't just say he was teaching great things when at the same time
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  he was implicitly, at least at the very least, implying he was God.
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  He said, if you don't hate your father and your mother more than me, you are not worthy of me.
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  If you do not hate your children more than me, you're not worthy of me.
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  And that might sound extreme and crazy.
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  And it is, unless it's true.
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  Unless Jesus is who he said he was, it is crazy. And you should throw out the
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  whole baby with the bathwater.
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  So I don't want, I so many times come across and I feel myself,
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  as you can see, I'm passionate about, I care a lot about this stuff,
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  but I don't want it to blind my eyes to outside opinions and outside viewpoints.
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  You know, and I know everybody's going through their own thing.
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  Everybody's going, and things can cause you to doubt.
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  And I had my things that I had to almost be absorbed in Christianity so that
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  I wasn't tossed back and forth in every direction, you know?
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  So everybody goes through their thing. You know, I, I pray for Rhett.
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  I pray he would return to the fold, you know, that might sound stupid.
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  Oh, you're just a stupid sheep, but we're all stupid sheep. Whether you're the
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  evolutionary biologist, scientist guy, or whatever, you have your own viewpoint
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  on how you're creating this world.
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  And you're just taking the writings of Darwin as your faith structure,
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  as your foundation for belief or whatever it is, you know, it's all opinion. It's all hearsay.
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  And you can say all this, but I am going to study more about it.
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  I'm going to study more about evolution and carbon dating and all that kind
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  of stuff, you know, because that's the stuff that tripped me up the most before I became a Christian.
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  I could not get on board with the dinosaurs.
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  How were there dinosaurs? And then all this other stuff is true.
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  And then the age of people in the Old Testament, lunacy, unless it's true.
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  All right. I'll leave it at that.