Latest / Brett Keane and Eve Show / Former Atheist Daniel @darwintojesus - Christian Testimony and Life Challenges

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Former Atheist Daniel @darwintojesus - Christian Testimony and Life Challenges · Brett Keane and Eve Show

• 0:29
  The. The.
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  The. The.
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  The. The.
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  The. Just another minute here, guys,
• 4:25
  and we'll get started. Hey, Wendell.
• 4:51
  Hey, Daniel, thanks for joining us here.
• 4:53
  Yeah, sorry. Were you waiting for me?
• 4:57
  Yeah, we was going to start it at 9:00 my time, 8:00 your time,
• 5:01
  correct. Yeah, sorry, I thought you were
• 5:04
  going to send me an invite in my DMS.
• 5:07
  My bad. That's OK.
• 5:09
  I tried to do that. And of course, Twitter, being
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  Twitter, would not allow that to happen at this time.
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  OK. Well, thanks so much for having
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  me. It's a real pleasure to get to
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  speak to you finally. Yeah, I've been looking forward
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  to this conversation we're going to have here tonight.
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  And we're going to be talking a little bit about apologetics.
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  But in particular, we're going to look at Daniel's story,
• 5:31
  Daniel, former atheist, now Christian.
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  And so we're going to listen to him give us his testimony of
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  what brought him out of atheism into Christianity and then kind
• 5:42
  of maybe field a few questions for me if you got some, And
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  maybe look a little bit at the moral argument as well as I
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  believe that's one of the things, Daniel, that you kind of
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  looked at that propelled you towards Christianity, if I'm not
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  mistaken. So with that, without further
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  ado, Daniel, the floor is yours. All right.
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  So it's interesting thing, you know, where do I begin?
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  But I guess where I would begin myself is with my first
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  experiences of, or my first memories of going to church.
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  My parents were both Pentecostals and I remember I
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  used to really just severely dislike going to church.
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  My mom tells me that I got baptized when I was like 7 or 8.
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  I was very young. I don't remember that at all.
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  But she said I went to a summer camp and I got baptized and I
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  was on fire for God. I have no memory of that.
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  All I remember is that they would make us go to church, and
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  I hated it. I thought that it was boring and
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  people would put their hands up and make strange noises.
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  And even when I was very young, I thought that there was just
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  something about it that was very strange.
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  It made me very uncomfortable, put it that way.
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  So from my earliest memories, I just really did not like church.
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  And I kept going because I kind of had to.
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  But I guess the first big thing that kind of changed was that my
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  mom and dad got divorced. Because my dad was unfaithful to
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  my mom and she tried to save the marriage.
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  She was prepared to move on, but he would not give up the affair.
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  And so he and my mom got divorced.
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  And that happened right as I was about to go into high school.
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  And so then I was going to church just with my mom, and I
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  was getting bigger and I was still living with my mom and my
• 7:46
  brother and sister. And I guess about the time I was
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  14 or 15 right around there, I was bigger than my mom.
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  And I guess the thing that I remember is that I was dreading
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  going to church so much this one particular day that we got to
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  church, I was sitting in the car, just dreading it, and we
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  get to church and I get out of the car and I look at my mom and
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  I said, I'm not going in there. I'm just going to walk home.
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  And she couldn't stop me. I knew that she couldn't stop
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  me, and she knew it. And so that's what I did.
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  I just walked home. And after that I didn't go to
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  church anymore. She knew that she couldn't make
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  me. And so I guess that's when I
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  really, I got a lot more into skepticism and these types of
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  things because the more I, you know, thought about
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  Christianity, the more I thought that it didn't make sense.
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  And maybe I'll talk about that later on.
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  But one thing I do want to mention right now, because this
• 8:54
  is kind of a topic for tonight, is that I would ask my mom
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  questions about Christianity growing up.
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  And I'd say, hey, mom, I don't understand this or I don't
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  understand that. And she would say, well, you
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  just have to have faith. And that really bothered me
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  because even though I wasn't very old, I realized, well, a
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  lot of people believe a lot of things, you know, So if we are
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  just being told to just have faith, well, how do I know that
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  the people that believe other things are not correct?
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  You know, it just really bothered me.
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  And I think it would have been a lot better if she had studied
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  some apologetics and been ready to give an answer for her faith.
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  And I know that people have jobs and people have lives, but I
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  just want to say that if you're raising kids, it's really good
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  if you prepare them for defending their faith and you
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  give them good reasons for Christianity because they do
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  exist. But that's kind of a off topic.
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  Did you want to say something? No, I was just going to say kind
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  of follow up that point and say I've heard that story so many
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  times individuals raised in church having questions and
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  we're either told, look you just got to believe it or even be.
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  I've heard this quite a bit in my time talking to former
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  Christians as well. They were told it's actually
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  it's not a good thing to to question God and kind of as if
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  if it was a negative to even come up with those kind of
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  questions. And and of course, you know,
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  Biblically speaking first Peter 315 tells us that you know, but
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  in your hearts honor Christ, the Lord is holy.
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  Always being prepared to make a defense.
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  And behind that term defense of course is the actual Greek word.
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  Apologia is where we get the term apologetics from.
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  And it means essentially to give a a reasoned argument or a
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  logical defense of the faith that so many Christians lack
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  that they don't take the time to study.
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  And I think that that's really hurting the church and modern
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  Americans today. But all right, Daniel, sorry to
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  interject that point, but go ahead.
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  Yeah, no, I really appreciate that.
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  And I I think you and I are definitely on the same page when
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  it comes to that. And I figured this would be a
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  good place to remind people, especially since there will
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  likely be Christians that listen to this.
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  You know, just try to have a good reason for why you believe
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  the things that you believe and then explain that to your
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  children. It's important because I thought
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  when my mom said, well, you just have to have faith, I'm like,
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  well that's not a good reason because anybody could say that.
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  A Muslim could say that, a Hindu could say that to their kids.
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  How am I supposed to know that Christianity is the true one?
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  They can't all be true. But anyway, so that really
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  bothered me and and when I did leave Christianity or or I
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  stopped going to church because I don't believe I was ever saved
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  before that. I just started coming up with
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  more and more questions and I became more and more skeptical.
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  And I got more and more into the skeptical slash atheist movement
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  to the point where I would watch the four Horsemen of atheism
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  which was Harris, Dockings Dennett and Hitchens.
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  Yeah, Hitchens was my favorite, and I would watch them and I
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  thought that they were all great except Daniel Dennett.
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  I thought he was kind of lame, but I really liked Christopher
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  Hitchens. I thought he was a wonderful
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  debater. Now, I would say that he really
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  didn't make arguments. He actually just made
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  rhetorical. He was very good with rhetoric,
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  but he really didn't actually make arguments, if you follow
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  what he's saying closely. But it's also kind of a side
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  point. So I got really into atheism,
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  and I thought that my mom was wrong.
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  I thought that Christians were wrong.
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  I thought that Christianity was a death cult.
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  And I thought that I was basically smarter than, you
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  know, 95% of the population of the world.
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  Because I had figured out that religion was all made-up and a
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  fairy tale. And, you know, I had seen
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  through it with my, you know, brilliant 20 year old mind or 18
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  year old mind. You know, that's how a lot of
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  atheists think, by the way, is that they're smarter than you
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  because they've realized that you've fallen for a con.
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  You know, that's how they kind of think of things.
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  It's a superiority thing. And it feels good to think that
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  way, you know, especially if you have a big ego.
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  So I guess the first thing that really got me asking questions,
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  and I'll never forget this, it happened in I think, 2012, so I
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  would have been 22 at this time. The first thing that got me
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  asking big questions was a show with Sam Harris, and he was
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  talking to Ben Affleck on the Bill Maher show.
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  And some of you might recall this because it actually made
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  quite a few waves. And I heard about it because I
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  watched a lot of YouTube. But what happened was Sam Harris
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  was making a very reasonable argument, at least I thought.
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  And he was saying that if we don't like Christians, if we're
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  trepidatious about Christianity because they're conservative and
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  that's wrong, because we're liberals, then we should be even
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  more reluctant or even more against Islam, because they are
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  more conservative, far more conservative, and they're also
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  responsible for far more attacks in the world, you know,
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  terrorist attacks. So I was thinking, of course
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  that that totally tracks. That makes perfect sense.
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  He's not saying anything that is wrong there.
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  We should be more against, you know, if conservatism is bad,
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  then we should be more against people that are more
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  conservative, obviously. But then Ben Affleck, who I know
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  was an atheist also, and who would agree with Sam Harris that
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  we should be against conservatism.
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  But Ben Affleck suddenly surprises me, and he starts
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  calling Sam Harris a racist. And he wasn't even addressing
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  the argument that Sam Harris was making.
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  He was just slandering him on national TV in front of
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  everybody. And I couldn't believe that.
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  I thought that that was just absolutely absurd for Ben
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  Affleck to do that, and that he was absolutely wrong.
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  But what surprised me even more was that about half of the
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  atheists in the community supported Ben Affleck.
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  See, I was thinking that atheists were incredibly
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  intelligent, and I couldn't fathom why so many super
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  intelligent beings like myself would think that Ben Affleck had
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  made a point in calling Sam Harris racist.
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  I mean for. I mean, just think about it.
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  It's not even a race that Sam Harris was criticizing.
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  It was a religion. Anybody of any race can be
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  Islamic, can be a Muslim. So even the name calling itself
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  was completely absurd. How could you support that?
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  Right? But half of the atheists
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  actually supported it, and I was just completely lost as to why
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  that would be. And there was this new thing
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  rising up called Atheism Plus in those days, and it was atheism
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  plus feminism. So the wokeness was starting to
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  basically creep into atheism. We weren't calling it wokeness.
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  Nobody really knew what it was. Well, I certainly didn't.
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  But there was something that was in the atheist movement that was
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  taking over a big parts of it that I totally did not agree
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  with because I was listening to these atheist plus people talk
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  about feminism and how women get paid less And I'm looking into
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  these claims and I'm you know, just realizing that it's really
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  doesn't follow at all. Men just simply work more hours.
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  They don't have babies. They tend to go into jobs that
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  pay more. You know, So to think that
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  because when you take the totality of the money that men
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  make and the totality of the money that women make, that
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  means that women get paid less for working equal hours in the
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  same job, This is a complete non sequitur.
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  And I don't know how anybody doesn't understand that.
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  But even as an atheist I totally understood that.
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  And I thought that it was just nonsense, just like all the
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  other arguments for feminism, and I was for feminism, but I
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  just didn't understand why it was still being pushed and why
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  women were acting like victims still.
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  So I'm just saying all that to say that there was a lot of
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  things that were coming to my awareness that I did not
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  understand, because I'm thinking, how are people making
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  these terrible arguments with these horrible statistics that
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  don't make any sense if you just think about it for two seconds
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  And how? How are such smart, enlightened
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  beings as atheists buying this and fighting for it and thinking
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  that this should be compelling and that it's important?
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  I just couldn't understand where it was coming from.
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  Where is all this leftist stuff coming from?
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  And I didn't really know it was leftist stuff.
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  I considered myself a leftist. I was never a communist, but I
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  was for abortion at one point. And you know, I was definitely
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  in support of gay marriage and things like that.
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  So I was definitely on the left side of things, but this this
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  caused a huge rift in the atheist movement.
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  And a lot of people may, but remember there were a lot of
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  YouTube videos where there were atheists that were criticizing,
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  you know, like Carl Benjamin. I'm drawing a blank on what his
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  YouTube name is. But he's one that would
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  criticize these leftists, even though he was also an atheist.
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  And there were a lot of YouTube channels that were atheists that
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  would criticize these far left atheists who were saying all
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  these absurd leftist things, making these horrible arguments.
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  And so I was on the right side of that.
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  I I was definitely in support of the what I thought were rational
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  atheists who were going against these irrational atheists.
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  And I'm I'm just wondering, where is this coming from?
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  Where is it coming from? I couldn't understand it, and it
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  wasn't for many years later that I actually figured it out where
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  it was coming from. And I'll get to that.
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  But that was the first thing with Ben Affleck that really got
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  me seriously questioning, you know, like just asking
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  questions, really kind of introspecting and trying to
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  figure something out about atheism that I just wasn't
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  figuring out. I didn't know.
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  So the next, I guess, big thing that that happened to me was
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  that I was, I think I was about 25 or 24 and I was really big
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  into CrossFit at this time. And there was this Crossfitter
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  named Rich Froning and he had won the games about three or
• 19:47
  four times in a row. I think it was four times the
• 19:49
  CrossFit Games. And I really looked up to him
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  because he was a great competitor and he's just a real
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  gentleman. And I I I'm very competitive
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  myself, so I respect people like that.
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  And I was watching a video of him.
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  It was a Netflix documentary. I'm watching this Netflix
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  documentary of Rich Froning, and it's showing him with his
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  family. It's showing just basically what
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  he did day-to-day. And I keep thinking myself, man,
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  this what a great guy, you know, over and over again, I'm just
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  thinking, what a great guy. Look at how his kids adore him.
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  Look how he spends time with this family.
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  What a great guy. Well, then he goes and he sits
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  down with his family to eat and they pray.
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  And I immediately dismissed him. I immediately dismissed him.
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  And I said, well, he's just a stupid Christian.
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  But then I thought to myself, wait a second, wait a second.
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  If I were to be deployed because I'm in the military, I thought,
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  if I were to be deployed, who would I want with me?
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  Would I want Rich Froning with me, or or would I want an
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  atheist with me? Because I'd had a lot of
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  dealings with atheists, you know, I considered them to be
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  friends, but I didn't have a lot of respect for the character of
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  the atheists that I was dealing with most of the time, actually,
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  probably pretty much all the time.
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  They tended to be hedonist, even though I didn't really know what
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  that word meant at the time, meaning that they only pursued
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  their their lusts of the flesh, you know, so fornication, drugs,
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  things like that. So I thought, what kind of man
• 21:37
  would I want to be with me if I was downrange, if I were
• 21:40
  deployed, Would I want Rich Froning?
• 21:42
  Would I want one of these atheists that I know?
• 21:45
  And when I thought about like that, I was like, well, Rich
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  Froning. Obviously I'd take one Rich
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  Froning at my side. In a situation like that, over
• 21:55
  10,000 atheists that I knew. And it's not even a close
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  question. I mean, I wouldn't even blink
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  twice. It'd be like Rich Froning.
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  He'd have my back. He would carry me off.
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  He would be there to the bitter end.
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  It's like no question in my mind about that man's character.
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  And I don't feel, I didn't feel like most atheists or really
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  hardly any of them would be that way.
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  And so that got me thinking, you know, who's really the good guys
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  here? Is it the Christians or is it
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  the atheists? Because if I want to go deploy
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  with someone like Rich Froning and a lot of Christians are like
• 22:29
  Rich Froning and a lot of atheists aren't like Rich
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  Froning at all. They're actually conniving and
• 22:35
  backbiting. And you know, they they don't
• 22:38
  really have any moral character. They're just constantly virtue
• 22:41
  signaling. And I'm not going to act like I
• 22:43
  was much better. I really wasn't.
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  But I was able to read, recognize the qualities of Rich
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  Froning versus the qualities of people like myself at the time.
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  You know, I just realized, you know, who are the good guys
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  here? It's the Christians, really that
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  are the good guys. It's not the atheists, You know,
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  we're we're all fighting amongst ourselves.
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  But we, you know, for all the bluster that atheists give about
• 23:08
  caring about people and, you know, human rights and
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  everything, when you actually go and you listen to the things
• 23:14
  that they talk about, when they talk with each other, they're
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  talking about drugs, they're talking about women, you know,
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  they're talking about pornography, They're talking
• 23:23
  about movies. It's all superfluous.
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  It's all meaningless. It's all There's nothing really
• 23:31
  deep or meaningful about what they think about or what they
• 23:35
  care about. And I cared about truth.
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  You know, even though I was an atheist, I did care about the
• 23:41
  truth. That was one thing that I'm
• 23:45
  really thankful for and one thing that I wish more atheists
• 23:49
  actually cared about, and I don't think that they do.
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  But I might talk about that in a bit.
• 23:55
  Wendell, did you want to say? Something yeah, I'm just going
• 23:56
  to jump in here really quick. You know, based on what you've
• 23:59
  been telling me about your experience with the atheist and
• 24:03
  going back to your your comments on Hitchens there.
• 24:08
  To me it almost is like they they buy into this very sophist
• 24:14
  type of of view of reality where basically truth is whatever can
• 24:18
  benefit you, whatever you can pass it off as.
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  And so they're really not concerned about any objective
• 24:24
  truth, but it's more or less just this idea of elevating
• 24:28
  ourselves using whatever means necessary in order to accomplish
• 24:31
  whatever goals we're trying to accomplish.
• 24:36
  Yeah, I I totally agree with that.
• 24:38
  And that's one of the things that I try to make people aware
• 24:42
  of is that the vast majority of people believe what they believe
• 24:48
  because they want it to be true, not because they have good
• 24:50
  reasons. The reasons come in order to
• 24:53
  justify what they want to be true.
• 24:55
  It's not the other way around most of the time, and that's
• 24:58
  especially true, I believe, for atheists.
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  They're not atheists because they have good reasons.
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  They have the reasons because they want to live life as they
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  see fit to do as thou wilt, as Aleister Crowley said.
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  They want to be their own little gods, and that's how I was.
• 25:15
  You know, I'll also mention that as an atheist, I was incredibly
• 25:19
  mean to people. Even when I was growing up.
• 25:22
  I loved giving people a hard time.
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  I have this very special ability and it is an ability to know and
• 25:30
  I still have this, but I know when I talk to somebody what
• 25:35
  their insecurities are, It doesn't take me very long to
• 25:37
  figure it out. And I know the things to say to
• 25:40
  them that will cause them to feel those insecurities.
• 25:44
  And I know how to say in such a way that they won't be able to
• 25:47
  come at me. So basically I like to press
• 25:51
  people's buttons. That's how I was.
• 25:54
  And so it was usually a miserable experience for people
• 25:57
  that would deal with me because I would be pressing their
• 26:00
  buttons, pressing on their insecurities and this gave me a
• 26:03
  great sense of self worth, I guess, you know, it's really
• 26:07
  mental bullying. But I used to do that a lot.
• 26:10
  I did to my brother and my sister and I would do it to my
• 26:12
  coworkers and you know, pretty much anybody that came into
• 26:15
  contact with me just was not a very pleasant person.
• 26:18
  I mean, my wife who's listening, the feminist turned housewife,
• 26:23
  she's in here. She'll tell you that when she
• 26:25
  first met me, we were both atheists and I had almost no
• 26:29
  empathy for anybody. You know, she would say, well,
• 26:33
  don't you care? And I'd just be like, no, I
• 26:35
  really don't care. You know, like you can if you
• 26:38
  want to leave me, then leave me. It doesn't matter really.
• 26:42
  So I was just really a cold hearted person.
• 26:46
  But anyway, that's just wanted to kind of touch on that.
• 26:49
  I'll get it back to the story now.
• 26:52
  So I guess the next part of the story, yeah, the next part of
• 26:56
  the story would be when I talked to my cousin because I was
• 27:01
  really wondering, I I had basically come to the conclusion
• 27:04
  that the Christians were the good guys and I was becoming
• 27:07
  more conservative in my thinking, even though it's still
• 27:10
  very cold hearted and everything.
• 27:13
  But I was talking to my cousin about these things.
• 27:15
  I was saying, you know, where's all this leftist stuff coming
• 27:18
  from? And and you know, it seems like
• 27:20
  the Christians are the good guys.
• 27:21
  And he said, you know, Daniel, there's actually a book that I
• 27:25
  think you could really benefit from reading.
• 27:28
  And he told me the name of the book, and the book was The
• 27:30
  Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt.
• 27:34
  And a lot of people that are listening to this probably
• 27:37
  haven't read that book, but I think you should because it's
• 27:39
  very interesting. And it's interesting.
• 27:42
  Well, it's very interesting to me because Jonathan Haidt, who's
• 27:46
  a liberal, basically studied the moral foundations of liberalism
• 27:53
  versus conservatism, conservatism.
• 27:56
  And he was asking the question, why is it that we're looking at
• 28:00
  the same facts, the same things, but we're having such grave
• 28:05
  moral disagreements between conservatives and liberals.
• 28:09
  Why is that? And so he studied morality.
• 28:13
  And what he found was that liberals tend to operate on only
• 28:18
  two of five moral pillars. And I actually pulled up the
• 28:22
  picture because I want to say what they were real quick.
• 28:25
  So there's the care, harm pillar, and then there's
• 28:29
  fairness or cheating. And then there's loyalty slash
• 28:32
  betrayal, authority slash subversion and sanctity slash
• 28:37
  degradation. And liberals are only working
• 28:41
  off of two out of those five pillars.
• 28:44
  They're working on the care harm and the fairness cheating.
• 28:48
  And conservatives are actually utilizing all five of those
• 28:52
  pillars. And that's why if you ask most
• 28:54
  liberals you say something to them like is it OK for a brother
• 28:59
  and sister to to fornicate with each other as long as they can't
• 29:03
  get pregnant? Well in the liberals mind
• 29:06
  they're just going to be doing OK Well is there harm?
• 29:09
  Well, there's no harm because they can't have a baby that
• 29:11
  might be malformed or whatever. So if there's no harm, then
• 29:16
  yeah, what's what's the problem? Whereas A conservative is going
• 29:20
  to look at that and they're evaluating that question with
• 29:24
  five pillars, not just care, harm and fairness.
• 29:27
  And with the the fifth pillar, which I think was sanctity slash
• 29:32
  degradation, that is a taboo idea.
• 29:37
  So because it's taboo and it it evokes the disgust in US, then a
• 29:45
  conservative would say absolutely not that is something
• 29:48
  that a brother and sister should not do because they have an idea
• 29:51
  of the sacred and brother sister relationship should be strictly
• 29:56
  brother sister. And so I found I'll get back to
• 30:01
  the book. I found this book very
• 30:02
  fascinating because it explained why so many liberals were so
• 30:08
  wrong on so many moral questions.
• 30:11
  And by this time, I had probably come around to believing that
• 30:15
  even abortion was wrong. I know it happened.
• 30:18
  I don't know if it happened before after I read the book,
• 30:21
  but just one second. Let me get the door for my wife.
• 30:24
  She's just getting home. Hey, sweetheart.
• 30:28
  So I was reading this book and realizing, you know, starting to
• 30:33
  really understand some of the issues that I'd had with
• 30:38
  liberalism and and with the atheist movement for all this
• 30:41
  time. And it was putting a little bit
• 30:44
  of the pieces together. I hadn't put it all together,
• 30:46
  but it definitely helped a lot. And it helped me understand even
• 30:49
  better why Christians were the good guys, because they were
• 30:52
  literally operating on five moral pillars and and their
• 30:57
  concept of morality was much more deep than the liberals,
• 31:02
  whose morality is incredibly shallow.
• 31:06
  So I guess the next thing that happened, that was really
• 31:11
  probably the biggest thing as far as my journey and everything
• 31:16
  was that, I guess let me think. I think I was about 27 when this
• 31:21
  happened, but I went into a Discord space.
• 31:25
  And for those of you who don't know what Discord is, it's just
• 31:27
  an app where people can talk to each other, kind of like what
• 31:30
  we're doing right now, and they can talk using voice or
• 31:35
  whatever. But I went into this Discord app
• 31:39
  like I had done before, and there's this politics channel,
• 31:42
  and for some reason I think I was out walking my dog.
• 31:45
  I was at a dog park and I just decided to go in there and they
• 31:51
  wanted to talk to me because I was a newcomer and they hadn't
• 31:54
  seen me before. So I started talking to them and
• 31:58
  it turned out that they were a bunch of atheists and they were
• 32:01
  questioning me. And that room in the politics
• 32:06
  server is very contentious. I mean, they really like to
• 32:09
  grill you. And I was explaining my beliefs
• 32:14
  and things like that. And for some reason morality
• 32:17
  came up. I don't remember exactly how,
• 32:20
  but I mentioned that I thought that it was wrong to do
• 32:23
  something. And they said, well, do you mean
• 32:25
  subjectively wrong or do you mean objectively wrong?
• 32:27
  And I said objectively wrong, of course.
• 32:30
  And they said, I thought you said you're an atheist.
• 32:34
  And I said I am. And they said, well, you do know
• 32:38
  that atheists can't justify or account for objective morality,
• 32:42
  right? And remember, this is a room
• 32:44
  full of atheists, OK? And I said, well, that's total
• 32:50
  nonsense. Sorry, go.
• 32:51
  Ahead. No, I was going to say that's
• 32:52
  actually, you know, that that shocks me because most of the
• 32:55
  time an atheist would not admit that.
• 32:58
  It shocked me, believe me, because I'd never heard atheists
• 33:01
  say that. And now I try to tell atheists
• 33:04
  that because most of the atheists I talked to are
• 33:06
  completely clueless on this. But anyway, yeah, I was
• 33:10
  absolutely shocked. You know, I was saying, well,
• 33:12
  what it What are you talking about?
• 33:15
  There are moral facts, you know, because even though I was an
• 33:19
  atheist and I was a hedonist and I was addicted to pornography
• 33:23
  and every all the rest of it, I still thought that things like
• 33:27
  rape were objectively wrong. You know, like there were moral
• 33:31
  facts about our reality, and it didn't matter what my opinion
• 33:35
  was, didn't matter. If the whole world suddenly said
• 33:38
  that rape is OK to do it would still be wrong.
• 33:41
  That's what I thought. And I still think that, you
• 33:45
  know, I think that that's just obvious.
• 33:47
  And I don't know how anybody in their right mind can disagree
• 33:50
  with that. You know, things like rape and
• 33:52
  child molestation and murder and you name it, these things are
• 33:55
  just wrong. And it doesn't matter what your
• 33:58
  opinion is. It's wrong, you know?
• 34:00
  But I felt very strongly that they were wrong.
• 34:04
  And what they did was they explained Hume's guillotine.
• 34:07
  So they they said, listen, you don't know what you're talking
• 34:10
  about. If you're going to be an
• 34:11
  atheist, you can't believe in objective moral values and
• 34:14
  duties. You can't justify it because of
• 34:18
  Hume's guillotine. And there are some other issues
• 34:20
  as well that they brought up. But the main one was Hume's
• 34:22
  guillotine, so I'll explain that real quick.
• 34:26
  Hume's Guillotine says that you cannot derive an ought from an
• 34:30
  is. So if there's no God, then all
• 34:34
  we have is what is meaning just the things that are with us just
• 34:39
  the way that the world is and you can't derive an ought from
• 34:42
  it. For example, just because my
• 34:44
  house is green does not mean that it follows that my house
• 34:50
  should be blue. OK, Even if I tell you a long
• 34:54
  story about how my house became green, you know, like there was
• 34:59
  this person and then there was that person who painted it this
• 35:01
  color and that color, you know, and I give you this whole long
• 35:05
  spiel about how my house came to be green, it doesn't follow that
• 35:09
  my house should remain green or should change colors or
• 35:13
  anything. You can't deduce what color my
• 35:15
  house should be from what color my house is.
• 35:19
  And a lot of atheists just cannot understand this concept.
• 35:24
  That you cannot derive an ought from an is because they'll say,
• 35:27
  well, we have evolution. You know, evolution explains
• 35:30
  morality. No, it doesn't.
• 35:32
  All you're doing is giving me a spiel explaining why human
• 35:36
  beings are the way that they are, why they have these values.
• 35:40
  That does not get you an ought. That just explains why we behave
• 35:44
  the way that we behave. That doesn't even tell you that
• 35:46
  the way we behave is good. It just says, here's the thing,
• 35:49
  that is human behavior and that's all you have.
• 35:53
  You have no odds, You have no obligations, you have no values.
• 35:57
  You're telling me a story, just like I told you a story about
• 36:00
  how my house came to be painted green.
• 36:03
  So they explained this to me. The is odd fallacy, which Hume
• 36:07
  came up with and it has not been refuted yet.
• 36:10
  He's still absolutely correct and I set out after that.
• 36:15
  I said you guys are all wrong. That can't be the case.
• 36:19
  Atheism is true. I still thought atheism was
• 36:21
  true. I said atheism is true and
• 36:24
  morality is true and you're just wrong.
• 36:27
  And I'm going to go and I'm going to prove it right.
• 36:29
  So I set out for the next, I think at least two to three
• 36:34
  years to prove them wrong. And I studied this question, the
• 36:39
  Azad fallacy. I studied it quite a bit in
• 36:43
  depth. And I also, you know, I tried to
• 36:47
  come up with all these different philosophical justifications for
• 36:51
  how morality could be objective without invoking a God.
• 36:56
  And at the end of the day, I just completely failed.
• 37:00
  I failed miserably, couldn't do it.
• 37:03
  And so then I had a real dilemma on my hands.
• 37:05
  You know, what am I going to do? Because I think that atheism is
• 37:08
  true, but I atheism, you know, these atheists were correct.
• 37:13
  I cannot account for objective morality within an atheist
• 37:17
  worldview. Within that frame, it just can't
• 37:20
  be done. They were right.
• 37:22
  So what am I going to do? Am I going to stay an atheist
• 37:27
  and admit that morality is subjective and say, hey, I don't
• 37:32
  like rape? That's my preference.
• 37:34
  But if you want to go rape somebody, including me, hey,
• 37:37
  that's your preference, you know, go right ahead.
• 37:39
  Your opinion is just as valid as mine, man.
• 37:42
  You know, like, to each their own.
• 37:44
  That's nonsense. That's nonsense.
• 37:49
  I was not willing to accept that.
• 37:50
  So that really put me in a pickle.
• 37:53
  And it made me seriously start evaluating and being critical of
• 37:57
  atheism because of atheism couldn't justify or account for
• 38:01
  something I knew that was true, like objective morality.
• 38:05
  Well, were there any other problems with atheism?
• 38:08
  And I started to seriously look at the worldview of atheism and
• 38:12
  what it could actually give me, because it couldn't give me
• 38:14
  objective morality. I had figured that out.
• 38:17
  So were there any other problems?
• 38:18
  And it turns out there were. And what I realized, being
• 38:23
  actually critical about atheism, which atheists do not do, they
• 38:26
  will not criticize their own worldview.
• 38:29
  The vast majority of them will not do this.
• 38:31
  But what I realized was that, wait a second.
• 38:34
  I'm being a hypocrite. And what I mean by that is I was
• 38:38
  making the argument that I haven't seen God.
• 38:42
  That's why I don't believe in God.
• 38:44
  You show me God, You let me smell God.
• 38:47
  You show me a miracle. You you do something in front of
• 38:50
  me that proves God empirically. Meaning based on my sense data,
• 38:55
  I'll believe in God. OK, that's what.
• 38:57
  I you got to running into the the Divine Hiddenness issue at
• 39:01
  this point. Well, what do you mean by that?
• 39:05
  Like there's an objection to the existence of God.
• 39:07
  They call it divine hiddenness. Like he's hidden.
• 39:09
  Yeah, And since we can't perceive him to empirical data.
• 39:14
  And that's an objection that you will run into sometimes with
• 39:17
  with several atheists. Well, I actually, I think it's
• 39:21
  the vast majority of them that because they're saying, well, I
• 39:24
  haven't seen physical evidence, you have to give me scientific,
• 39:28
  verifiable proof that God exists.
• 39:31
  And unless you give me that and I'm not going to believe in it.
• 39:35
  And that's what I was saying. I said, you give me a scientific
• 39:37
  study, you give me some kind of scientific data, some kind of
• 39:41
  observation that I can make with my senses and I'll believe in
• 39:44
  God. And what I realized was that,
• 39:48
  wait a second, when I say that I'm making an argument and all
• 39:55
  arguments are appealing to what? Appealing to logic.
• 40:00
  So I believe in logic because I'm making an argument and I'm
• 40:02
  appealing to logic. Well, that means that I must
• 40:06
  believe that logic exists. Well, have I ever seen a
• 40:11
  scientific study that proves that logic exists?
• 40:15
  Of course not. Had I ever seen logic with my
• 40:18
  own two eyes? Did I have any physical evidence
• 40:21
  whatsoever that logic existed and was a real thing?
• 40:26
  No. I had absolutely no evidence
• 40:28
  whatsoever that logic was a real thing.
• 40:30
  And not only that, but I didn't believe that there was any
• 40:33
  evidence that logic existed as a physical thing.
• 40:37
  So here I am believing in this thing called logic with zero
• 40:42
  scientific or sense data evidence for its existence.
• 40:47
  That's called hypocrisy, OK? And if any atheists are
• 40:51
  listening to this, that's hypocrisy.
• 40:54
  You can't have your cake and eat it too.
• 40:56
  If you're going to set forth a standard, be consistent.
• 41:00
  Be consistent. And I realized I wasn't being
• 41:03
  consistent. And at this point, I went and I
• 41:06
  talked to an atheist friend of mine who was on discord.
• 41:11
  And we had talked a lot. We we'd known each other for
• 41:14
  years, at least three years. We would talk for hours on
• 41:17
  Saturdays, and usually it was about how stupid Christians were
• 41:21
  and stuff like that. But on this particular occasion,
• 41:24
  I went to him with this question because I was I I still thought
• 41:28
  the atheism was true, but I was starting to have doubts, right?
• 41:32
  Because I I said to him, listen, here I am using this argument
• 41:37
  for why I don't believe in God. I'm saying that I need this
• 41:39
  sense data. I need this particular type of
• 41:41
  proof in order to believe in things.
• 41:44
  And yet I believe in logic. And I have none of that
• 41:46
  scientific proof. I have none of that for my
• 41:50
  belief in logic. And what he said to me I'll
• 41:53
  never forget. It also surprised me a lot.
• 41:58
  He said if you keep asking questions like this, you will
• 42:02
  not be an atheist for very long. That's what he said.
• 42:08
  And he was right. I did keep asking questions like
• 42:12
  that because when people tell me things like that, it makes me
• 42:15
  want to ask more questions. You know, I wanted an answer,
• 42:18
  said, hey, why are we believing in logic if we don't have any
• 42:21
  empirical evidence for it? You know, it's a valid question.
• 42:25
  At least I think it is. But yeah, that's that was his
• 42:30
  response. So I dug some more and I started
• 42:34
  realizing, well, it's not even just logic.
• 42:36
  There's a whole bunch of other things that I have no empirical
• 42:39
  evidence for that I believe. For example, for example, I
• 42:43
  believe that my reasoning is sound.
• 42:45
  What's the justification for sound reasoning?
• 42:49
  Where's the evidence for that? You actually can't give any it's
• 42:53
  totally question begging to even try to justify or account for
• 42:59
  your reasoning being sound. And I said I was against
• 43:02
  question begging. You know, that's what atheists
• 43:05
  say all the time. They'll give lip service to it.
• 43:08
  I said you can't beg the question.
• 43:09
  You can't say that the Bible is true because the Bible says it's
• 43:12
  true. That's question begging, you
• 43:14
  know. I don't allow question begging,
• 43:16
  that's that's a fallacy. But in order to justify my
• 43:20
  belief that my reasoning was valid, I had to appeal to my
• 43:22
  reasoning, the very thing that's in question.
• 43:26
  So if in order to be consistent with my skepticism of what
• 43:31
  Christians were saying, I would need to be consistent and stop
• 43:35
  thinking that my reasoning was sound and basically just stop
• 43:39
  reasoning and stop relying on my reasoning, which would mean that
• 43:43
  I couldn't make any arguments for or against God.
• 43:45
  And really, I probably couldn't even eat.
• 43:48
  I should just pretty much lay down and die, right?
• 43:50
  Well, I wasn't going to do that, but I realized that that was
• 43:53
  another big problem with my epistemology, and I guess I
• 43:58
  haven't really used that word. So I'll explain that for people
• 44:01
  that don't know. But epistemology has to do with
• 44:04
  how we can know a thing is real or true.
• 44:07
  So how do you know that something is true?
• 44:09
  Well, the way that we form beliefs about what we think is
• 44:14
  true is called our epistemology. And so my epistemology was an
• 44:18
  empiricist. I was saying that I needed
• 44:21
  empirical data in order to prove or in order to believe in
• 44:25
  something as true. But here I found I was making
• 44:28
  all these exceptions like logic and just to touch on logic
• 44:32
  again. In order to prove logic, you
• 44:34
  have to beg the question because you have to assume the very
• 44:37
  thing that you're trying to prove.
• 44:40
  If somebody says how do you account for?
• 44:42
  How do you justify your belief in logic?
• 44:45
  I'm going to have to use logic in order to prove it.
• 44:48
  You can't. You can't not use logic in order
• 44:52
  to prove logic. That would be illogical.
• 44:54
  But that begs the question because once again, you're using
• 44:57
  logic in order to prove logic. OK.
• 45:00
  So yeah. You're getting into an issue of
• 45:02
  a circular reasoning on that. Yes, even the statement itself
• 45:06
  that a lot of atheists seem to miss is you will hear this from
• 45:10
  several atheists. The only source of truth is
• 45:12
  science. But of course that very
• 45:14
  statement itself is untestable. That's exactly right.
• 45:19
  Yes, empiricism and the and scientism is inherently self
• 45:25
  defeating. If you say the only way to know
• 45:26
  something is through empiricism will that statement.
• 45:30
  The only way to know something is through empiricism is not
• 45:33
  empirically verifiable and so it it cannot be true empirically.
• 45:39
  And therefore empiricism as a epistemology is self defeating.
• 45:44
  Like it came and get off its own grounds for rejecting claims,
• 45:50
  but I didn't realize that yet. I just wanted to cover that.
• 45:54
  So, so yeah, I realized that there were actually a whole
• 45:58
  bunch of things that I believed without any physical evidence.
• 46:01
  And, you know, like logic. I believed in my ability to
• 46:06
  reason. I believed in this thing called
• 46:08
  the self, which was me. You know, like there's actually
• 46:12
  a person that's having these thoughts.
• 46:13
  I believed in that that cannot be proven with science.
• 46:18
  I also believed in morality, which you can't prove with
• 46:21
  science. You know, I believed in numbers.
• 46:25
  You can't prove numbers with science.
• 46:27
  A lot of atheists think if you hold up two fingers that that's
• 46:29
  like a two. That's not an actual 2.
• 46:31
  That's just a representation of a two.
• 46:34
  You know, there's no, there's no actual two floating around in
• 46:38
  space somewhere. Or you know, you've never held a
• 46:40
  real two in your hands. All we have is numericals, which
• 46:44
  are representations of twos, but numbers themselves are
• 46:47
  conceptual and yet we believe in them, you know?
• 46:51
  So there's a whole bunch of things that I realized I was
• 46:55
  believing and I was making exceptions for and shouldn't be
• 46:58
  believing based on my rejection of God.
• 47:01
  So that's a huge problem, right? Because either I'd be a total
• 47:05
  hypocrite. I had three options.
• 47:07
  OK, I think it was 3. Either I'd be a complete
• 47:10
  hypocrite and I say, well, I need all these criteria to be
• 47:13
  met in order to believe in God. But I'll just make an exception
• 47:16
  for all these criteria to be met in order to believe in logic or
• 47:19
  my ability to reason or numbers or morality.
• 47:22
  You know, I don't need that criteria to be met for all the
• 47:24
  things that I want to be true. But when it comes to God, yeah,
• 47:27
  no, now I need that stuff, all that criteria to be met.
• 47:31
  So that's being a total hypocrite.
• 47:33
  So I could. I continued to be a total
• 47:35
  hypocrite, which didn't really wash well with me because I
• 47:40
  actually cared about what was true.
• 47:42
  So that was the first option. Second option was I could stop
• 47:48
  believing in all those things. I could be consistent with my
• 47:51
  epistemology and I could just stop believing in law, in the
• 47:54
  laws of logic, and stop believing in my ability to
• 47:56
  reason, stop believing in morality and all these things
• 47:59
  that I needed in order to go through my life and and live for
• 48:03
  even one more minute. I can just stop believing in all
• 48:05
  of them, right? And I could lay down and die.
• 48:08
  So that was the second option. I didn't like that one very much
• 48:11
  though, and so I left another option, which is.
• 48:17
  Well. Atheism.
• 48:19
  My atheism cannot account for all these things.
• 48:22
  But I need these things in order to live, and I believe that
• 48:24
  they're true. So I need to adjust my world
• 48:28
  view in order to account for these things.
• 48:31
  How do I account for these things?
• 48:35
  I need to change my epistemology because clearly my epistemology
• 48:38
  is not going to cut it. I need to form a new
• 48:41
  epistemology that can account for these things, and these
• 48:45
  things cannot be justified. Your ability to reason can't be
• 48:47
  justified. So that's not even in question.
• 48:50
  You can't justify these things with evidence.
• 48:52
  There's no evidence for them. But can we account for that
• 48:54
  meaning? Can we give a good reason for
• 48:57
  why they would be the case? You know, another one is the
• 49:00
  uniformity of nature. I'll talk about that real quick,
• 49:02
  because it's important. And science presupposes
• 49:05
  uniformity of nature. But uniformity of nature says,
• 49:08
  will the future be like the past?
• 49:11
  Meaning, like if I say, why do you think the sun is going to
• 49:14
  come up tomorrow? Well, you're going to say, well,
• 49:15
  because it's always come up. Well, this is called the problem
• 49:18
  of induction, another problem that Hume actually pointed out.
• 49:22
  He had Hume's guillotine, and then he had Hume's problem of
• 49:25
  induction. And what he pointed out is our
• 49:28
  belief that the sun will come up tomorrow.
• 49:30
  It's totally unjustified because you're just appealing to the
• 49:33
  past as if that makes sense to justify future knowledge, but
• 49:38
  you have no information about the future.
• 49:42
  Yeah, that's right. I think I've heard Hume's
• 49:45
  argument put this way as well. Think of like a a fire.
• 49:48
  We all know if he was to go touch a fire with burn us.
• 49:50
  But we have no reason to truly trust that the next time we
• 49:54
  touch a fire that it will burn us.
• 49:55
  It could be a cold fire. Yeah, absolutely.
• 49:59
  And one illustration I I like to make that will really, I think
• 50:04
  drive the point home is when we say, well, the sun has come up
• 50:07
  every day. So therefore we can reasonably
• 50:10
  rely on the sun coming up tomorrow, That's like walking
• 50:13
  backwards without knowing. So you're walking backwards and
• 50:18
  you can only see where you've walked so far and saying, well,
• 50:22
  because I haven't walked off a Cliff so far, there's not a
• 50:25
  Cliff behind me on the next step.
• 50:28
  You have absolutely no information about the next step.
• 50:31
  You've only gotten information about the previous steps.
• 50:35
  So we can see, hopefully, if you're listening, why that would
• 50:39
  not make any sense to say, but that's how we all think.
• 50:42
  We all think that the uniformity of nature will hold.
• 50:46
  However, in the atheist worldview, there's no good
• 50:49
  reason to believe that uniformity of nature should
• 50:52
  hold, because there's no mind behind everything.
• 50:55
  There's no mind that is responsible for existence, so
• 50:59
  everything is really just caused mindlessly.
• 51:02
  And if everything is caused mindlessly, then why would we
• 51:04
  expect for the laws of physics to hold together?
• 51:08
  It should be thought by the atheist.
• 51:09
  If they were to be consistent, it should be thought that the
• 51:13
  fact that things have remained as they have all this time is
• 51:17
  the greatest possible coincidence.
• 51:19
  All right, think about like this.
• 51:21
  Imagine a roulette wheel. You know, there's 100 numbers on
• 51:24
  a roulette wheel at a roulette table and the ball lands on 10.
• 51:30
  OK And you're with your friend and it lands on 10 again and
• 51:33
  lands on 10 again and lands on ten 1000 times.
• 51:36
  And you look to your friend and say, hey, how do we explain
• 51:38
  this? It's just landed on ten, 1000
• 51:41
  times. Well, I would say I think the
• 51:45
  tables fixed, but what if your friend says, I don't think it's
• 51:48
  fixed. I don't think there was any
• 51:49
  intelligence behind this. I think it's just, you know, I
• 51:52
  think that the table is a real table and it's just purely
• 51:56
  random. And this is a coincidence.
• 51:58
  Well, if he really believes that, then the next question
• 52:01
  should be, well, well then what's it going to land on the
• 52:03
  next go around? And he should say, I have
• 52:06
  absolutely no idea, it has just as much chance of landing on any
• 52:09
  other number as it does on 10, right.
• 52:14
  And that's how atheists should view the future.
• 52:16
  They should say I have absolutely no idea if the next
• 52:20
  breath I take is going to be oxygen or water or fire or
• 52:24
  poison. I have absolutely no information
• 52:26
  about the future, and there's no good reason to believe that the
• 52:29
  future will be like the past, because there isn't.
• 52:31
  You have to beg the question in order to make the case so they
• 52:34
  shouldn't be assuming it. And yet all science assumes that
• 52:39
  the universe is uniform. The atheists cannot justify that
• 52:44
  or account for it in their world view.
• 52:46
  But theism can. Because theism says, hey, the
• 52:50
  roulette will, the roulette table is fixed, fixed by God,
• 52:54
  right? The universe is fixed by God.
• 52:56
  And so we can depend on the the uniformity of nature.
• 53:01
  We can depend on that because there is a rational agent behind
• 53:04
  that who is keeping it fixed and stable for us, you know, for his
• 53:09
  creatures who he loves. So it makes perfect sense to
• 53:12
  believe in it and to account for it if theism is true.
• 53:15
  But if atheism is true, they should be rejecting that once
• 53:19
  again and science with it, right?
• 53:22
  So the justification for science should go out the window just on
• 53:25
  those grounds alone. So what I'm trying to say is,
• 53:28
  there's all these things that I want to continue to believe that
• 53:32
  I couldn't believe within atheism and be consistent.
• 53:37
  And so I needed to change my epistemology.
• 53:39
  I need to change my worldview. And that's what I was starting
• 53:43
  to realize. But then the biggest thing hit
• 53:45
  me, I'll talk about that. The the biggest thing that that
• 53:49
  I realized was that atheism literally leads to a
• 53:52
  contradiction, and it actually leads to several.
• 53:56
  But I'll just talk about the one that I realized at the time.
• 54:00
  So what I realized was that knowledge is actually a huge
• 54:04
  problem for atheism. What I mean by that is that when
• 54:09
  you talk about knowledge, you're talking about can you hold a
• 54:13
  justified true belief? If you have knowledge, the
• 54:16
  belief must be true, it must be justified, and you have to
• 54:21
  believe it all right in order for it to be knowledge.
• 54:25
  Well, the problem with the atheist is that they start from
• 54:27
  themselves. And if you're an atheist, you
• 54:31
  really can't account for how you can have knowledge.
• 54:34
  Because here's the thing, let's say that I just grant the
• 54:40
  atheist. I say, OK, you have knowledge,
• 54:42
  you say you have knowledge. OK.
• 54:44
  You know, 1% of all possible knowledge and you know, that's
• 54:49
  really being very, very, very generous.
• 54:52
  But say you have 1% of all possible knowledge.
• 54:55
  And he says, OK, I say, all right, so that means that
• 54:58
  there's 99% of things, like if we draw a circle and this is all
• 55:02
  possible knowledge, 99% of the circle is filled with things
• 55:06
  that you don't know, Correct. Yes, that's correct.
• 55:11
  Well, let me ask you Can all the things that you don't know prove
• 55:15
  you wrong or incorrect about the things that you think you know
• 55:19
  right now? Well, the answer should be
• 55:21
  absolutely new. Information can always prove us
• 55:25
  wrong about what we think we know.
• 55:27
  But if. But that means that everything
• 55:29
  that we think we know could be wrong.
• 55:32
  And if we could be wrong about what we think we know, then we
• 55:35
  can't know anything. OK, we can't know anything, all
• 55:39
  right. But that's a contradiction,
• 55:42
  because when you say I can't know anything or I don't know
• 55:45
  anything, that in itself is a knowledge claim.
• 55:48
  That is like saying the truth is.
• 55:50
  There is no truth you know to say.
• 55:54
  Anytime you say that something is false, that in itself is a
• 55:58
  truth claim. If I say this is false, X is
• 56:01
  false. Well, I'm also saying it's true
• 56:05
  that what I just said is false, is false.
• 56:07
  OK, so like somebody says that my dog is outside right now,
• 56:12
  Well, he's inside. I'm looking at him.
• 56:14
  So I would say that's false. But really, in order for that to
• 56:18
  be false, truth must exist. OK, So what that means is that
• 56:22
  in order for falseness to exist, truth must exist first.
• 56:27
  Because all all falseness requires truth to be a
• 56:30
  meaningful word. Right.
• 56:31
  You couldn't. You literally couldn't have a
• 56:33
  universe where everything was false.
• 56:36
  Falseness requires truth to exist, and in the same way
• 56:41
  ignorance requires knowledge to exist.
• 56:44
  Whenever we say we don't know, we are saying that we know that
• 56:48
  we don't know this thing. So all claims of falseness are
• 56:52
  claims of truth, and all claims of ignorance are also at the
• 56:55
  same time claims of knowledge. Because when we say we don't
• 56:58
  know, we're saying we know there's this thing that we don't
• 57:01
  know. You can't make a claim about
• 57:03
  ignorance without also making a claim about knowledge.
• 57:06
  All right, so hopefully I've made that point.
• 57:08
  And what that means then, is that to know nothing is a
• 57:11
  contradiction. You can't know nothing.
• 57:14
  All right, that creates A contradiction.
• 57:16
  But the in the atheist worldview, they can't account
• 57:19
  for how they have knowledge because they can be wrong about
• 57:22
  everything that they know and they're starting with
• 57:24
  themselves. And and what I realized is that
• 57:30
  they can't account for knowledge.
• 57:31
  So atheism literally leads to this contradiction of saying I
• 57:35
  know nothing or I can't know anything.
• 57:38
  And if atheism leads to a contradiction, well then it
• 57:42
  can't be true. If atheism leads to a
• 57:45
  contradiction, it can't be true. And if atheism can't be true and
• 57:49
  isn't true, then guess what that means?
• 57:52
  That God exists. That's what it means, because
• 57:54
  either atheism is true, or at least one God exists.
• 57:59
  And if you want to real quick Daniel, what you're talking
• 58:01
  about here is a a positive claim derived from a negative claim.
• 58:04
  So like the Acres today they like to state this.
• 58:09
  I I simply lacked A belief that God exists, which is a negative
• 58:13
  claim but it's actually has a positive claim and tell to it.
• 58:16
  But they want to try to deny that.
• 58:20
  Yeah, I mean it's like saying I lack a belief that Lance
• 58:24
  Armstrong went to the moon. You you're, you have a belief.
• 58:28
  You know, if if you say, like, I don't believe that vaccines are
• 58:33
  harmful, that's a belief. You know, if you say I don't
• 58:37
  believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK, that's a belief.
• 58:42
  But these people just, you know, won't admit that because they're
• 58:46
  dishonest and they're suppressing the truth and
• 58:49
  unrighteousness. But I'll get back to what I was
• 58:52
  saying. So I realize that atheism
• 58:55
  literally leads to this contradiction.
• 58:57
  And if atheism leads to this inherent contradiction, then
• 59:00
  there's only one other game in town, which is theism is true.
• 59:04
  It's one or the other. Either God exists or God doesn't
• 59:06
  exist. If atheism is true, then God
• 59:08
  doesn't exist. But if atheism is false, then
• 59:11
  that must mean that God exists. Well, I had realized that
• 59:13
  atheism is false. It can't be true.
• 59:16
  So therefore God must exist necessarily.
• 59:20
  And not only does God exist, but he actually can account for how
• 59:23
  we have knowledge. Because if there's no God, we
• 59:25
  can't have knowledge but God. Actually you you can account for
• 59:29
  knowledge because God is an all knowing being.
• 59:31
  So remember I said if you don't have all the knowledge, then if
• 59:37
  you don't know everything, then what you don't know can prove
• 59:39
  you wrong about what you claim to know.
• 59:41
  So in other words, what that means is that in order to know
• 59:44
  any one thing, you actually have to know everything.
• 59:47
  You can't know anything unless you know everything.
• 59:49
  So the only way that knowledge is possible is if there's an all
• 59:53
  knowing being. All right, that's the only way
• 59:55
  for knowledge to be possible for anybody is if there is an all
• 59:58
  knowing being. So if human beings have any
• 1:00:01
  knowledge, then that must necessarily mean that there's an
• 1:00:04
  all knowing being. Well, do human beings have
• 1:00:07
  knowledge? Yes, we do.
• 1:00:08
  We have to because to deny our knowledge is a contradiction.
• 1:00:12
  So we do have knowledge. We can't deny it.
• 1:00:14
  We can't say I know nothing that creates A contradiction.
• 1:00:16
  That can't be true. So we have knowledge.
• 1:00:19
  How do we account for it? Well, it must be accounted for
• 1:00:21
  because God has created us such that we can know things.
• 1:00:24
  Even though it's not everything, but we can know some things and
• 1:00:29
  that knowledge is must be given to us in some way by this all
• 1:00:32
  knowing being, he could give us knowledge that's possible.
• 1:00:36
  So that actually explains how we have knowledge and how
• 1:00:40
  Christianity or theism can account for how we have
• 1:00:45
  knowledge. And this this very troubling
• 1:00:47
  question that nobody really wants to seem to talk about.
• 1:00:51
  So I realized that atheism was literally a contradiction.
• 1:00:56
  And at this point, I'm like, OK, God exists.
• 1:00:58
  I was wrong. And I called my mom and I I
• 1:01:03
  talked to her and I said, listen, I I was wrong.
• 1:01:09
  And I know that God exists and I'm going to, I'm going to give
• 1:01:13
  him my life because I knew that if God exists, then he's good.
• 1:01:17
  And you know, God can't be bad, right?
• 1:01:21
  So if God exists and he's all knowing, then he's, he's the
• 1:01:23
  good guy. And I knew that evil existed,
• 1:01:26
  right? And obviously you couldn't have
• 1:01:28
  an evil God. So if God exists and I'm against
• 1:01:32
  evil, well, shouldn't I be with the guy who's good, you know?
• 1:01:36
  So that's basically how I was thinking at the time.
• 1:01:40
  And so I I told my mom, I'm going to, I'm going to give my
• 1:01:43
  life to God. She said, why don't you do it
• 1:01:45
  tonight? You know, she was thinking just
• 1:01:47
  like I would. Now you only have, like, you
• 1:01:50
  don't know if you're going to live through the night, you
• 1:01:53
  know, give your life to him now, Like, just just do it.
• 1:01:55
  But I didn't. I didn't do it because I wanted
• 1:01:59
  to send more. That's the honest truth.
• 1:02:01
  I wouldn't have put it that way at the time, but I wanted to
• 1:02:04
  send more. I wanted to keep watching porn.
• 1:02:06
  I was totally addicted to pornography at the time, which
• 1:02:08
  is a huge problem for men and Christian men in today's day and
• 1:02:13
  age. And we really don't talk about
• 1:02:16
  it very often. We really should.
• 1:02:18
  But yeah, I was completely addicted to pornography and I
• 1:02:21
  wanted to keep doing my thing. You know, I had realized
• 1:02:24
  philosophically that God exists, but I wanted to keep living for
• 1:02:28
  myself a little bit longer. You know, I want my freedom.
• 1:02:31
  That's really what it boiled down to.
• 1:02:33
  And so I did. I think I waited about 3 months,
• 1:02:36
  at least one month. But eventually, you know, I
• 1:02:42
  said, listen, I've, I know that God exists and I've been putting
• 1:02:46
  this off and I'm going to stop. And so you know that this isn't
• 1:02:50
  a typical type of Christian story, what I'm saying right
• 1:02:53
  now, but it is the truth. And I I don't want to lie, but
• 1:02:57
  what I did was I got down on my knees and I prayed to God and I
• 1:03:02
  said, listen, I know that you exist.
• 1:03:07
  I know that you're real. And if you're real, then I want
• 1:03:11
  to serve you and I want to give you my life and I want to spend
• 1:03:14
  the rest of my life serving you. And I don't really care what
• 1:03:17
  that means for me, but I just want to.
• 1:03:20
  I just want to serve you and and live the rest of my life serving
• 1:03:24
  you because you're good. And I know that I'm not.
• 1:03:28
  And that that was the prayer that I prayed.
• 1:03:31
  And it was pretty much the first prayer that I had prayed since
• 1:03:34
  being a child. And I remember I I stood up from
• 1:03:38
  that prayer and I walked outside and I looked up at the stars
• 1:03:42
  because it was night time. And I looked up at the stars and
• 1:03:46
  I thought, wow, God exists. And I realized in the, in that
• 1:03:54
  moment, you know, I'm looking at the the sky and I'm looking
• 1:03:57
  around me and I had the silliest grin on my face and I'm thinking
• 1:04:01
  to myself, I've always known that God is real.
• 1:04:05
  I I've been lying to myself. Of course God exists.
• 1:04:10
  Why have I been lying to myself? I've always known.
• 1:04:12
  He's always been there. He's always been there, and I've
• 1:04:15
  always known it. And I realized that the world is
• 1:04:17
  actually a very magical place because there's this mind behind
• 1:04:21
  it, you know, And it's it's incredible when you think about
• 1:04:26
  it that there's this there, there actually is a a being that
• 1:04:30
  is transcendent and above us all and who created us and who cares
• 1:04:35
  about us. I mean, it's incredible when you
• 1:04:37
  think about it. And we don't just live in this
• 1:04:39
  blind, pitiless and different universe like some people will
• 1:04:43
  will tell you, but no. The universe has a meaning and a
• 1:04:46
  purpose, and we have a meaning and a purpose and that is
• 1:04:50
  unbelievably amazing, you know. And so I just, I'm walking to
• 1:04:55
  the chow and I had this really stupid grin on my face and you
• 1:05:02
  know, I'll never forget that night.
• 1:05:03
  And I guess the next thing that happened to me, it's kind of
• 1:05:09
  funny because my wife, who when I met her, she was an atheist,
• 1:05:12
  but she got saved about a month before me and she didn't even
• 1:05:16
  really tell me, I don't think. But yeah, she got saved about a
• 1:05:21
  month before me. She got saved in a more
• 1:05:23
  traditional type of way where she was told the gospel and she
• 1:05:27
  was like she was told the gospel by a man at her work who she
• 1:05:32
  really respected. And she explained it to her and
• 1:05:35
  she was like, wow, no Christian has ever explained that to me
• 1:05:37
  in, in a way where it made sense.
• 1:05:39
  And she was actually receptive to it.
• 1:05:42
  And she accepted it and went home and prayed and and became a
• 1:05:46
  Christian that night. It's incredible.
• 1:05:48
  So she has kind of a more traditional type of story than I
• 1:05:50
  do. But what I'll say, because I
• 1:05:54
  know I haven't really talked about the gospel, is that I
• 1:05:58
  after, after giving God my life, I heard the gospel about two
• 1:06:01
  weeks later about how Jesus Christ had died for our sins and
• 1:06:06
  that we were all sinners and we were guilty before God and and
• 1:06:09
  that God and that God had sent his Son to earth to pay the
• 1:06:12
  price for us for our sins because he loved us so much.
• 1:06:16
  And that basically Jesus was crushed for our sin by God.
• 1:06:22
  You know, he was given the wrath, the wrath of God was
• 1:06:24
  poured out on Jesus for us, for all of us.
• 1:06:29
  When I heard that, suddenly it all clicked together and it made
• 1:06:32
  sense to me. I was like, wait, that's what
• 1:06:36
  Christians have been saying all this time is the most bizarre
• 1:06:38
  thing because I'd heard it a million times before and it
• 1:06:41
  never made any sense. You know why?
• 1:06:43
  Why does God have to send his son to earth, you know?
• 1:06:45
  And what do you mean I'm a Sinner?
• 1:06:47
  But suddenly it made sense to me and and I was like, well, I I
• 1:06:54
  was on the fence kind of about what God it was that I was
• 1:06:57
  praying to. But now I knew it was.
• 1:06:59
  It was Christianity. Christianity was true.
• 1:07:03
  And so from that time on, I was a Christian, you know, and I I
• 1:07:07
  called my mom up and I told her and everything, and she was just
• 1:07:10
  so happy to hear that. Sorry, Wendell, did you want to
• 1:07:12
  say something? No.
• 1:07:14
  So basically I was kind of following your story here and
• 1:07:17
  you kind of given me tones of like Anthony Flu in his
• 1:07:21
  conversion journey. And for those who don't know,
• 1:07:23
  Anthony Flu, he was a a predominant English philosopher
• 1:07:28
  taught at the University of Oxford philosophy, and of course
• 1:07:31
  was one of the authors of the Humanist Manifesto.
• 1:07:33
  He was like a a hero to atheist. And of course, several years
• 1:07:38
  ago, Anthony Clue's now passed away.
• 1:07:40
  But he actually had a change of mind and he went from being an
• 1:07:45
  atheist to a deist. He never quite made it to
• 1:07:49
  Christianity, I don't believe. And so that's what I was going
• 1:07:52
  to ask you, but you've I've already covered that part, the
• 1:07:55
  apologetics, you know, the logic of the contradiction that that
• 1:07:58
  brought you to understand that atheism was false and that
• 1:08:01
  theism was true. And I was going to ask you then,
• 1:08:04
  you know, what brought you from theism to Christianity.
• 1:08:07
  But you've you discovered that quite nicely.
• 1:08:10
  Yeah. It was hearing the gospel.
• 1:08:12
  And I I just realized like, Oh my gosh, this actually makes
• 1:08:15
  sense. And and I just knew, kind of
• 1:08:18
  like my wife did, that it was the truth.
• 1:08:21
  And you know, it's kind of hard to explain to people that don't
• 1:08:25
  haven't had the experience. But, you know, if you have had
• 1:08:30
  the experience, it's kind of like explaining what a hot stove
• 1:08:34
  feels like to someone who can't feel pain.
• 1:08:36
  You know, we know what it feels like, but you just don't.
• 1:08:39
  And we know that that stove is hot.
• 1:08:42
  But if you can't feel pain, you really don't know what we know.
• 1:08:47
  And it's kind of like that that that's how I would that's the
• 1:08:49
  best way I can put it right now. But once, once I realized that
• 1:08:53
  Christianity was true, then I started reading the Bible, You
• 1:08:58
  know, my wife and I, we, we, we had started going to a very
• 1:09:01
  liberal church and we felt like something was just wrong.
• 1:09:05
  And luckily we started listening to brother Spencer Smith who
• 1:09:11
  he's this YouTube for people who don't know.
• 1:09:13
  And he was saying how the Bible needs to be your foundation, you
• 1:09:16
  know? And I thought that made a lot of
• 1:09:18
  sense. You know that the Bible should
• 1:09:21
  be our foundation. You know, like if it if the
• 1:09:24
  Bible isn't your foundation for as a Christian, the what is you
• 1:09:27
  your reasoning? Because based on my reasoning, I
• 1:09:30
  wouldn't think that a man could come back from the dead.
• 1:09:33
  You know, Christianity doesn't make any sense to my reasoning.
• 1:09:37
  But I knew Christianity was true and I knew that based on my
• 1:09:40
  reasoning, you know, my reasoning would lead to
• 1:09:42
  rejecting logic and all that. So I wasn't really too keen on,
• 1:09:46
  on just reasoning independently from God anymore.
• 1:09:49
  So I needed a real foundation. And the Bible being the
• 1:09:54
  foundation, made perfect sense to me.
• 1:09:57
  And so he said, you know, you need to get into a
• 1:09:58
  fundamentalist church. And he gave out this website
• 1:10:02
  where you type in your zip code and it puts you in a good
• 1:10:05
  fundamentalist church. And we've been in that church
• 1:10:08
  now for about 3 years and it's just been an incredible
• 1:10:12
  blessing. I mean a lot.
• 1:10:14
  There are churches that aren't very good and and there are a
• 1:10:16
  lot of hypocrites and Christianity.
• 1:10:18
  But the church that I'm in, I think it's one of the best in in
• 1:10:21
  in America. It's small but the the people
• 1:10:24
  there really care about each other and and it's incredibly
• 1:10:27
  welcoming. But I know people aren't really
• 1:10:28
  here to hear that. So I'm just trying to kind of
• 1:10:32
  fill in a little bit of the rest of the story.
• 1:10:34
  What I'll also say, though I do want to say this, is that when I
• 1:10:38
  got saved, suddenly things that I thought were just totally
• 1:10:43
  fine. We're not fine anymore because I
• 1:10:47
  used to swear all the time and my wife was even worse than me.
• 1:10:50
  She was like twice as bad. She was horrible.
• 1:10:53
  She would make a sailor blush, and I'm not kidding, she was
• 1:10:57
  bad. We both had filthy mouths.
• 1:10:59
  Even when I was talking to my mom, I had no respect, you know?
• 1:11:02
  And I used to love to push people's buttons.
• 1:11:05
  I was totally addicted to porn. I loved Hollywood movies and I
• 1:11:08
  loved rock'n'roll and all this kind of stuff.
• 1:11:11
  We both smoked. We both or I I liked to gamble.
• 1:11:14
  I loved playing poker and all this stuff.
• 1:11:16
  And suddenly I'm realizing, wait a second, why am I doing this?
• 1:11:21
  Why am I? You know, I I would hear
• 1:11:22
  somebody swear and use like the F word and I would think, why
• 1:11:26
  did they do that? That wasn't even necessary.
• 1:11:29
  That wasn't needed, you know. And I'd hear people take the
• 1:11:32
  Lord's name in vain, you know, And I would think, why did they?
• 1:11:36
  Why did they have to take the Lord's name in vain?
• 1:11:37
  And I'd think, wait a second, I'm taking the Lord's name in
• 1:11:40
  vain. Why am I doing that?
• 1:11:42
  You know, I just started to be, like, convicted about these
• 1:11:44
  things. And my perspective started to
• 1:11:46
  change about things that I thought were totally fine.
• 1:11:52
  You know, I didn't get down on my knees and pray to God
• 1:11:54
  thinking that he was going to change all these things about me
• 1:11:58
  because these things I thought were fine.
• 1:12:01
  I didn't think of them as sins or as wrong or I didn't think
• 1:12:04
  that they they were wrong at all.
• 1:12:05
  But suddenly I started to realize, wait, they they kind of
• 1:12:08
  are wrong. They're actually really wrong.
• 1:12:10
  And I need to stop doing them, you know.
• 1:12:12
  And and God just kind of changed my, my perception of these
• 1:12:17
  things, You know, I don't even. I used to love Hollywood movies.
• 1:12:21
  I mean, I had a passion for film.
• 1:12:23
  And now, I mean, the last movie I watched was, it was The Sound
• 1:12:30
  of Freedom. That's the last time I went to
• 1:12:32
  the movies, and the time before that was probably like 6 months
• 1:12:37
  before that. My wife asked me to go see
• 1:12:39
  Guardians of the Galaxy, but I almost never go to the movies to
• 1:12:42
  see anything because Hollywood just puts out filth all the
• 1:12:46
  time, you know, And they always take the Lord's name in vain.
• 1:12:49
  And I just lost my taste for that.
• 1:12:53
  And I lost my taste for rock'n'roll, and I lost my taste
• 1:12:56
  for gambling. And we both quit smoking, you
• 1:12:58
  know, all. And and the biggest miracle that
• 1:13:01
  I want to say, which I thought was never going to stop, was
• 1:13:05
  that I I was able to stop watching pornography, which is
• 1:13:11
  just incredible to me. I mean, people act like miracles
• 1:13:15
  don't happen. But I had a problem, a very
• 1:13:18
  serious problem. I mean, at first when I would
• 1:13:21
  try to stop, like I started being convicted about it and I
• 1:13:24
  started trying to to to get to get away from it.
• 1:13:29
  And I would go for like 2 weeks without going to it.
• 1:13:33
  And then something would just come over me like an urge that I
• 1:13:37
  just could not resist. It was like I was possessed and
• 1:13:40
  I would just go, you know, I it's like I couldn't control
• 1:13:43
  myself at all. I thought, I'm never going to be
• 1:13:46
  able to stop doing this. And I'll bet that there are men
• 1:13:48
  who will listen to this and and they know what I'm talking
• 1:13:50
  about. It can't be only me.
• 1:13:53
  And yeah, I just didn't think I would ever be free of it.
• 1:13:56
  But I prayed about it and one day I talked to my wife about
• 1:14:02
  it. I think she was still my
• 1:14:04
  girlfriend at the time. It was around the time we got
• 1:14:07
  married. But I talked to her and I said,
• 1:14:10
  listen, I have this problem. I know it's a problem, and I
• 1:14:14
  want you to hold me accountable. I want you to ask me like every
• 1:14:18
  day or every week if I've watched it.
• 1:14:23
  Because I won't lie to you, I love you and I won't lie to you.
• 1:14:26
  And I'm not going to want to tell you the truth, but I will.
• 1:14:29
  And if I'm doing it, I need you. You know, we'll go from there.
• 1:14:33
  But I think that that might help.
• 1:14:36
  And she said, OK and believe it or not, since that day, which
• 1:14:40
  was at least I think three years ago, I have not watched
• 1:14:43
  pornography one time. Not one time.
• 1:14:46
  All right. And the other stuff that goes
• 1:14:48
  along with pornography, I haven't been doing any of that
• 1:14:50
  either. You know, sex has been
• 1:14:52
  completely with my wife and only with my wife.
• 1:14:55
  That's it. Even when she's been pregnant
• 1:14:57
  and given birth. And we haven't been able to do
• 1:14:59
  anything for six weeks. 0 porn. None.
• 1:15:03
  All right. Now that is a miracle in my eyes
• 1:15:06
  if you know me and you know how I was.
• 1:15:08
  And I do. That is a miracle.
• 1:15:10
  And I just praise God for that. And I I just want to, you know,
• 1:15:13
  tell speak to the men in here that might be listening to this
• 1:15:16
  and have this problem, this horrible addiction, that
• 1:15:20
  pornography is evil, but God can take it from you.
• 1:15:23
  I know that from personal experience, he can He can remove
• 1:15:26
  that from you. And you know, I I found somebody
• 1:15:30
  that I cared about to hold me accountable and and that worked
• 1:15:34
  for me. But ultimately, God gets the
• 1:15:36
  glory for that because that's not something I could have ever
• 1:15:40
  done on my own strength, you know?
• 1:15:41
  So I just wanted to say that these changes happened to me,
• 1:15:45
  that I didn't think we're going to happen, that I didn't think
• 1:15:48
  needed to happen, and yet they happened all, you know,
• 1:15:50
  nonetheless, My life completely changed.
• 1:15:53
  I no longer wanted to be mean to people and to press their
• 1:15:57
  buttons. I just, you know, actually I
• 1:16:00
  started to care about people, even my enemies, and I no longer
• 1:16:03
  have held any resentment for people.
• 1:16:06
  I just cared about them and and loved them, you know?
• 1:16:11
  So I I just wanted to to say that that God, Jesus Christ
• 1:16:16
  completely changed my life 180°, you know, anyway, feel like I've
• 1:16:21
  been talking a lot. You're doing great, Daniel.
• 1:16:25
  And I certainly appreciate that testimony.
• 1:16:27
  I mean I've I've what you described there of course was
• 1:16:31
  was an addiction. Addiction to pornography.
• 1:16:33
  But I have seen God deliver people from other addictions as
• 1:16:35
  well. Drug addictions, a big thing
• 1:16:37
  here in Kentucky, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, it is
• 1:16:42
  battling a huge opioid epidemic. And I have seen Jesus get in
• 1:16:47
  people's lives and turn them completely around, remove that
• 1:16:51
  drive because their testimony echoed a lot What you were
• 1:16:55
  saying There is just no matter how hard they try to resist, it
• 1:16:59
  was almost like they were possessed.
• 1:17:01
  And it's like this demon inside of them was driving them to keep
• 1:17:04
  using And and it took Jesus to truly break that chain.
• 1:17:07
  They they had tried therapy. They had tried, you know,
• 1:17:10
  substance abuse treatment centers and things like that.
• 1:17:13
  But it was ultimately the gospel of Jesus that was able to
• 1:17:16
  deliver them from that And and that truly is miraculous.
• 1:17:20
  Yeah, it really is, you know that.
• 1:17:23
  And that's one of the things that I think about a lot when
• 1:17:25
  people question Christianity is I'm.
• 1:17:28
  I'm like, I have a personal experience of being changed by
• 1:17:32
  God in ways that I wouldn't have even fathomed in ways I wasn't
• 1:17:37
  even trying. I didn't, I didn't, you know,
• 1:17:39
  become a Christian, thinking I'm going to do this because I need
• 1:17:43
  to become a better person. I thought I was a great person,
• 1:17:45
  you know, Like, I knew I wasn't perfect.
• 1:17:48
  But the things that God started pointing out to me, I didn't
• 1:17:51
  know those were even problems. You know, It was like asking a
• 1:17:55
  fish if if it's wet, it's going to be like, what are you talking
• 1:17:58
  about? You know, it's just that that's
• 1:18:00
  just how things work. So I guess we could, you know,
• 1:18:05
  if you want, we could talk about the the moral argument a bit and
• 1:18:08
  we could kind of flesh that out. Yeah.
• 1:18:11
  Before we do that, is there any questions for Daniel?
• 1:18:24
  I guess I just explained everything so well that no one
• 1:18:27
  has any questions. You did an excellent job,
• 1:18:29
  Daniel. So yeah, we'll go ahead and
• 1:18:30
  proceed to the moral argument. OK, well, what I want to say as
• 1:18:36
  far as the moral argument goes, a lot of atheists really just do
• 1:18:41
  not understand the argument. I talked about the Izod gap, but
• 1:18:47
  it's actually a bunch of other problems for theism or sorry for
• 1:18:51
  atheism, to account for objective morality.
• 1:18:55
  One of them is that in order for morality to be objective, you
• 1:18:59
  need objective values. Meaning that when I say a value,
• 1:19:03
  I mean something that is valued. So like if I take my watch to
• 1:19:07
  this pawn shop and I say, hey, give me $50.00 for this and he
• 1:19:11
  says no, the value is 20 and I say no, it's 30.
• 1:19:15
  We're arguing about the value of the watch.
• 1:19:17
  Well, when we talk about objective values, we're talking
• 1:19:19
  about values like good and bad based on our behavior.
• 1:19:23
  So, like, if I neglect my family, that might have a value
• 1:19:27
  of being bad, right? If I protect my family, that
• 1:19:31
  might have a value of being good.
• 1:19:34
  But are these values subjective or are they objective?
• 1:19:37
  Well, in order for morality to be objective, the values must be
• 1:19:40
  objective. How do you get objective values
• 1:19:44
  from a universe that isn't even supposed to be here?
• 1:19:48
  From us, who we're not supposed to be here?
• 1:19:51
  There's no intentionality behind us.
• 1:19:53
  We're just random cosmic accidents, right?
• 1:19:57
  How do you get objective values like good and bad out of that?
• 1:20:01
  Now, a lot of people will say, a lot of atheists will say, well,
• 1:20:04
  empathy. Don't you have empathy?
• 1:20:06
  Why is empathy good? Think about that.
• 1:20:09
  Why is empathy good? Well, it's not.
• 1:20:14
  You're just arbitrarily saying that it's good.
• 1:20:17
  But what is your justification for saying that empathy is good?
• 1:20:21
  Because if I say well, empathy is bad.
• 1:20:23
  That's just as arbitrary, right? Like we can say empathy is good.
• 1:20:26
  We can say hatred is good. We could say suffering is good
• 1:20:29
  or suffering is bad. You know, what is the
• 1:20:33
  justification for making a claim?
• 1:20:36
  Like empathy is objectively good.
• 1:20:39
  How are you getting that? You know, because you're a
• 1:20:41
  subject, and I'm a subject, and I might see things differently.
• 1:20:45
  I might disagree with you. So how do you prove me wrong?
• 1:20:48
  When you say empathy is good, and I say no, empathy is bad,
• 1:20:50
  how do you prove that you know you you can't?
• 1:20:55
  From an atheist worldview, you cannot justify objective values,
• 1:20:59
  and I already covered why you can't justify objective duties
• 1:21:03
  because of Hume's guillotine. You also need free will, because
• 1:21:08
  if we're all determined, then none of our choices mean
• 1:21:12
  anything. They're all determined outside
• 1:21:14
  of us. So you can't have morality if if
• 1:21:17
  we don't have the choice to have done otherwise.
• 1:21:20
  So objective morality also requires free will, right?
• 1:21:24
  Because if somebody else is making us do all the things that
• 1:21:26
  we do, then we can't be moral. We're just like a rock rolling
• 1:21:30
  down a hill. You know, if a rock rolls down a
• 1:21:32
  hill, a giant boulder rolls down a hill, and it crushes a family
• 1:21:36
  as they're driving, you know, to a vacation or whatever, we don't
• 1:21:41
  say the rock is bad. You know?
• 1:21:43
  We say what? Well, that's unfortunate, You
• 1:21:46
  know, it's a tragedy. But we don't say the rock did
• 1:21:48
  anything bad. It was just doing what it did
• 1:21:51
  based on responding to the laws of physics, didn't have a the
• 1:21:55
  possibility of doing other than it did, right?
• 1:21:58
  So in order for morality to be objective, you also have to have
• 1:22:01
  free will. How do you account for and
• 1:22:04
  justify free will if there's no God?
• 1:22:08
  If there's no God, then all of our choices, all of our beliefs,
• 1:22:12
  are just determined by cause and effect, by the universe.
• 1:22:17
  The the physical constants, you know, it's atoms that are
• 1:22:20
  spinning in our head in a particular way at a particular
• 1:22:22
  frequency. And just because those atoms
• 1:22:25
  have to happen to be in a certain way and cause and
• 1:22:28
  effect, that's where we get our beliefs from.
• 1:22:30
  That's where we get. That's why we do the things that
• 1:22:33
  we do. It's not because we actually get
• 1:22:36
  to choose. It's all determined.
• 1:22:38
  You know, it's like winding up a watch and letting it play out.
• 1:22:42
  So atheism cannot justify or account for free will, which you
• 1:22:47
  need. So that's was that.
• 1:22:50
  That's three. Another thing that you need in
• 1:22:53
  order to account for objective moral values and duties is an
• 1:22:58
  objective standard. OK, that means that there has to
• 1:23:01
  be something, whether it be right in front of us or
• 1:23:04
  somewhere far removed. But there has to be something
• 1:23:06
  that we could potentially appeal to in order to say this is right
• 1:23:10
  and this is wrong. You know, if I, if you and I
• 1:23:13
  both pull out a compass and I say, OK, N is that way, and you
• 1:23:17
  say, wait a second, I'm looking at my compass and it says it's
• 1:23:19
  the opposite way, how do we determine whose compass is
• 1:23:23
  correct? Is there a way to do that?
• 1:23:25
  Because if there isn't a way to do that, at least, you know, in
• 1:23:30
  theory. Like, maybe there's a building
• 1:23:33
  that we could go to with a true compass, and that'll tell us
• 1:23:36
  whose compass is correct, right? If there.
• 1:23:38
  If that doesn't even exist, if it can't exist, then talking
• 1:23:42
  about who's going north is totally meaningless, right?
• 1:23:47
  Totally meaningless. Why?
• 1:23:48
  Why are we talking about who's going north if there's no such
• 1:23:52
  thing as actual north, Right? So you need an objective
• 1:23:56
  standard? Yeah.
• 1:23:57
  It actually has to be possible for an objective standard to
• 1:24:00
  exist in order to talk about what you ought to have done or
• 1:24:05
  what you're obligated to do. Or if you did something bad,
• 1:24:08
  right? There must be an objective moral
• 1:24:10
  standard somehow that is possible to exist.
• 1:24:13
  And atheism cannot in any way, shape, or form account for how
• 1:24:17
  an objective moral standard would exist.
• 1:24:20
  All right? Because we're not even supposed
• 1:24:22
  to be here. Life isn't even supposed to
• 1:24:23
  exist. It's just a coincidence.
• 1:24:26
  And there's no like, there's no objective moral standard
• 1:24:28
  floating through space somewhere in this purely material universe
• 1:24:31
  or whatever. So the the Platonist, the
• 1:24:35
  Platonic atheist might be able to make an argument for an
• 1:24:39
  objective moral standard. They're not going to be able to
• 1:24:42
  make an argument for free will, though, and these other things.
• 1:24:44
  But most atheists are materialistic, so doesn't even
• 1:24:47
  matter to my way of thinking. And Platonic atheists have their
• 1:24:51
  own problems. Do you want to say something?
• 1:24:53
  Yeah, I was just going to real quick put it in basically the
• 1:24:57
  moral argument into a like a logical form here.
• 1:24:59
  So like premise one, we would state objective moral values and
• 1:25:02
  duties exist in the world. Premise 2, the best explanation
• 1:25:05
  for the existence of objective moral values and duties is the
• 1:25:08
  existence of God. Therefore God exists.
• 1:25:10
  That's a logical, valid argument.
• 1:25:13
  The only kickback you will see most of the time from atheists
• 1:25:15
  is on premise #2. But a what?
• 1:25:18
  A lot of what you've already explained demonstrates why, in
• 1:25:22
  fact God is the best, the best explanation for these objective
• 1:25:26
  moral values and duties. But another thing that the
• 1:25:29
  atheist like to do, They always want to put the Christian in the
• 1:25:32
  defense, right? They want us to answer the tough
• 1:25:35
  questions, but we don't have to do that.
• 1:25:38
  We can make them present an argument as to why they would
• 1:25:43
  object to premise #2. That got us the best explanation
• 1:25:46
  for these objective moral values and duties.
• 1:25:49
  And anytime you do that, it's like watch.
• 1:25:52
  It's like watching a fish out of water.
• 1:25:55
  It's kind of flop around everywhere that they can't do
• 1:25:57
  it, they can't ground it in anything.
• 1:25:59
  Right. Yeah, they they're just totally
• 1:26:03
  clueless when it comes to these matters.
• 1:26:05
  I mean, I've had countless atheists because I I like making
• 1:26:08
  the moral argument, because to me, it's one of the big reasons
• 1:26:10
  why I left atheism. And so I think it's very
• 1:26:13
  important. But a lot of atheists will say
• 1:26:17
  things to me like, well, I don't need God in order to be good.
• 1:26:21
  You know where when you were an atheist, were you going around
• 1:26:24
  killing people and raping everybody?
• 1:26:26
  And I'm like, that is not the point at all.
• 1:26:29
  OK, for any atheist that thinks that that is a valid point, Let
• 1:26:33
  me explain why it's not all right.
• 1:26:36
  The reason why that has absolutely nothing to do with
• 1:26:39
  the argument is because the argument is talking about how
• 1:26:42
  objective moral values and duties could exist in the 1st
• 1:26:46
  place. We're talking about the
• 1:26:46
  existence of these things. So the fact that I personally
• 1:26:51
  preferred not to go around killing people when I was an
• 1:26:55
  atheist has absolutely nothing to do with what is in question.
• 1:27:00
  Whether I prefer to go around killing people as an atheist or
• 1:27:03
  not doesn't address the point. The point is that the best
• 1:27:07
  explanation for objective moral values and duties is that God
• 1:27:11
  exists. I'm not saying that atheists
• 1:27:13
  can't do good things. What I'm saying is that if
• 1:27:17
  atheism is true, no one can do good things because good
• 1:27:21
  couldn't exist, right? There could not be an objective
• 1:27:25
  good. It would all be preference and
• 1:27:28
  opinion. It's like you like pineapple on
• 1:27:30
  your pizza. I don't, you know, you like to
• 1:27:33
  rape. Well, that's, that's what you
• 1:27:35
  like. I don't, you know.
• 1:27:36
  But you do. You, you know, nobody argues
• 1:27:39
  with somebody else that their preferences are wrong.
• 1:27:42
  I've never gotten into an argument with somebody about why
• 1:27:45
  they shouldn't, you know, eat pineapple on their pizza.
• 1:27:48
  Actually, I like pineapple on my pizza, but I've never argued
• 1:27:52
  with somebody about that. Not seriously, anyway.
• 1:27:55
  It's a joke. People, people talk about that
• 1:27:57
  like, oh, you shouldn't like cream in your coffee, What are
• 1:27:59
  you doing? But they do that jokingly.
• 1:28:01
  Nobody's serious about that. And if they if morality is
• 1:28:05
  subjective, then all human behavior morally should be.
• 1:28:11
  It's just preference. So why are we arguing about it?
• 1:28:14
  You know, why are we making laws?
• 1:28:15
  Think about this. The atheist who says that
• 1:28:18
  morality is subjective, and the vast majority of them do, except
• 1:28:21
  for the serious philosophers, Most of them say they're more
• 1:28:24
  realist. But most of your run-of-the-mill
• 1:28:27
  atheist is going to say that morality is subjective.
• 1:28:32
  So let me get this straight atheist.
• 1:28:34
  You're telling me that morality is just based on your
• 1:28:37
  preferences and you think that because you have a preference,
• 1:28:42
  you should get to make laws that control other people and put
• 1:28:46
  them in jail for disagreeing with your subjective
• 1:28:49
  preferences. Is that what you're telling me?
• 1:28:51
  That is what they're telling you.
• 1:28:52
  And that's absurd. That is absolutely absurd.
• 1:28:55
  That's like wanting to arrest somebody for eating their pizza
• 1:28:58
  differently than you. And that's.
• 1:29:00
  And that's because they really don't believe that morality is
• 1:29:03
  subjective, but they can't ground objective morality, you
• 1:29:07
  know? So they're kind of forced into
• 1:29:09
  this absurd, you know, position where they have to literally
• 1:29:13
  say, oh, it's OK to to arrest you for having a different
• 1:29:17
  preference in human behavior than me because we happen to
• 1:29:20
  outnumber you, You know, it's ridiculous and.
• 1:29:23
  It doesn't escape the old relativist trap, right?
• 1:29:27
  I mean, if you state that morality is subjective, you have
• 1:29:31
  made a truth claim in a positive sense.
• 1:29:34
  Therefore, the values come back into play and it's truly
• 1:29:38
  inescapable to state to even be able to try to argue that
• 1:29:43
  morality is subjective, you need a God.
• 1:29:47
  Yeah, that's that's what I realized, you know, when I was
• 1:29:51
  an atheist trying to account for how you're going to get duties
• 1:29:54
  like obligations from a universe that never even planned on you
• 1:30:00
  being here like. But somehow there's like this
• 1:30:02
  transcend transcendental obligator for your human
• 1:30:07
  behavior. That's just you're not going to
• 1:30:10
  get that from atheism. That's not going to happen.
• 1:30:13
  You need a God who is perfect, unchanging, and able to, with
• 1:30:18
  authority, give obligations for them to mean anything.
• 1:30:21
  Now, do human beings have obligations?
• 1:30:24
  Yes. We all intuitively know that We
• 1:30:26
  do. If I abandoned my family, you
• 1:30:29
  know people are going to say you are obligated to stay with them,
• 1:30:33
  to protect them, you in obligation to watch over your
• 1:30:36
  daughter. You're not meeting your
• 1:30:38
  obligations. You've abandoned your family.
• 1:30:40
  We all understand these things. We all understand that we have
• 1:30:44
  obligations in this world, moral obligations that are real.
• 1:30:47
  You know, I mean, atheists can't get away from it.
• 1:30:50
  They make moral claims all the time about how we have human
• 1:30:54
  rights. Where do human rights come from
• 1:30:57
  in an atheist worldview? Like?
• 1:31:00
  And it's just absurd to think about that.
• 1:31:02
  Like you're telling me you believe in the only things you
• 1:31:05
  believe in our scientific Can you show me the scientific
• 1:31:09
  experiment that proves that human beings have rights?
• 1:31:12
  How's that work exactly? You know, it's just absurd.
• 1:31:16
  Anyway I can go on about this for days?
• 1:31:20
  Yeah, I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head.
• 1:31:24
  The moral arguments. Just one thing, you know, in the
• 1:31:27
  arsenal of apologetic arguments that point to the existence of
• 1:31:30
  God, but kind of as we begin the wind down here and close up, one
• 1:31:35
  of the things I want to go back to, you mentioned discovering
• 1:31:39
  Brother Spencer on YouTube and him really talking about the
• 1:31:44
  importance of a biblical worldview.
• 1:31:46
  Now you know, normally think about apologetics.
• 1:31:48
  We think about it, you know, providing a defense to the
• 1:31:51
  skeptic and to the atheist, and, you know, giving the defense of
• 1:31:55
  our faith that way. But it truly is valuable for
• 1:31:58
  believers as well. Ken Ham, if you know the
• 1:32:01
  Creation Museum, the, yeah, Creation Museum and the Arkham
• 1:32:05
  County, he's very big on this. You know, one of the
• 1:32:08
  disconnects, I believe, when Christians have conversations
• 1:32:11
  with atheists is we're approaching the world from 2
• 1:32:16
  vastly different points of view, right?
• 1:32:18
  Our world view is vastly different.
• 1:32:20
  As Christians, our world view needs to be based on Scripture.
• 1:32:23
  We derive it from, you know, the Bible.
• 1:32:25
  Atheists of course do not have that.
• 1:32:27
  So therefore it's just the materialistic type of world view
• 1:32:30
  that they are starting with. You know, at the basis, I
• 1:32:33
  believe we both have a presupposition of sorts, right?
• 1:32:36
  Our presupposition is the world is best defined through the
• 1:32:40
  Bible, through God. And atheists would then try to
• 1:32:42
  argue, no, it's strictly materialist.
• 1:32:44
  So that's often why we had this disconnect between atheism and
• 1:32:48
  Christianity. I believe when we're having
• 1:32:50
  conversations, and as a Christian, especially in modern
• 1:32:55
  America today, I can't state enough how important it is to
• 1:33:00
  take the time, if you're a parent, to go through, learn
• 1:33:04
  some basic apologetic arguments. You don't need to be a
• 1:33:06
  professional scholar to get involved in these debates and
• 1:33:10
  conversations, but you need to be able to offer your children
• 1:33:13
  some type of response when they have these tough questions.
• 1:33:16
  And, you know, with my kids, I've encouraged them to ask
• 1:33:19
  questions. I don't want them to, to not
• 1:33:22
  have answers because they're going to go seek answers
• 1:33:25
  elsewhere, probably from the world.
• 1:33:27
  And that's not going to be a very good thing, you know, for
• 1:33:31
  our Christian youth. So we need to spend the time and
• 1:33:33
  effort learning the arguments for the existence of God,
• 1:33:36
  chewing on these things. That way we are prepared to help
• 1:33:39
  them in their own faith. Yeah.
• 1:33:43
  I would also just add not only that, but your, your kids in
• 1:33:47
  this day and age, they're going to go out into the world and
• 1:33:50
  they're going to get slaughtered if they're not prepared because
• 1:33:54
  they're going to be getting hit with, you know, science and
• 1:33:57
  evolution and all these criticisms of the Bible like, Oh
• 1:34:01
  well, the Bible justifies slavery and all this other
• 1:34:03
  stuff. And they're if you they are not
• 1:34:06
  prepared, their mind is going to get blown, OK.
• 1:34:09
  Because a lot of people know criticisms of Christianity and
• 1:34:15
  you know, they're not going to be ready unless you get them
• 1:34:19
  ready. You have got to give them armor,
• 1:34:22
  philosophical justification, good reasons, prepare them.
• 1:34:27
  Otherwise they're just going to get slaughtered out there and
• 1:34:29
  they're going to think, I don't have good reasons for my faith.
• 1:34:32
  You know, so many kids go to college and they stand in front
• 1:34:35
  of their professor and they've never been challenged.
• 1:34:38
  You know, they've never felt like asking questions.
• 1:34:41
  Or when they did ask questions, they got shut down.
• 1:34:44
  And so they've never really thought critically about their
• 1:34:46
  faith and they get start getting questioned by their atheist
• 1:34:50
  philosopher, teacher or whatever.
• 1:34:52
  And they don't have answers because they've never heard
• 1:34:54
  these these problems before. Tell your kids the problems,
• 1:34:59
  tell them what they're going to expect and give them the answers
• 1:35:02
  to it. You know, at least prepare them
• 1:35:04
  if you can. I know these things, these
• 1:35:07
  things take time, but what's more important than your your
• 1:35:09
  children, you know, and and where they go when they die.
• 1:35:13
  It's so important. That's what I believe anyway.
• 1:35:17
  Yeah, no doubt. I mean, and we're blessed to
• 1:35:20
  live in the information age. You can get on YouTube, you can
• 1:35:23
  you can go to a lot of great philosophers, Christian
• 1:35:27
  philosophers that present, you know, apologetic type arguments
• 1:35:30
  and and so the resources are easily findable.
• 1:35:34
  You can just search for books. There's a plethora of great
• 1:35:39
  resources on Christian apologetics that will help you
• 1:35:41
  get prepared and be able to defend the faith, not only for
• 1:35:46
  yourself when you're out in public.
• 1:35:47
  Because it does happen more and more in the age that we live in
• 1:35:51
  here in America as America becomes more and more secular.
• 1:35:54
  You know, one of the things we can talk about briefly because
• 1:35:56
  you kind of come up with the Four Horsemen, they of course
• 1:35:59
  represented the New Atheism and the New Atheism.
• 1:36:04
  Their main argument against Christianity wasn't really an
• 1:36:07
  argument at all, but it was just rhetoric and shaming.
• 1:36:10
  And that's why we see so many memes on the Internet today
• 1:36:13
  trying to make Christianity look just preposterous because they
• 1:36:18
  know they can't engage Christianity with true
• 1:36:20
  philosophical arguments because they will get slaughtered and
• 1:36:23
  debates. It happens all the time.
• 1:36:25
  So they look for shame and ridicule in order to avoid
• 1:36:29
  arguments altogether. Yeah, it's really unfortunate.
• 1:36:35
  And I I really wasn't much better when I was an atheist.
• 1:36:39
  I didn't really. I loved to argue.
• 1:36:42
  But you know, I just, I I mostly relied on rhetoric.
• 1:36:47
  You know, looking back on it, I don't think I was really
• 1:36:49
  actually making arguments or you know, trying to have a good
• 1:36:54
  argument or any of that type of of thing.
• 1:36:57
  And that's one of the things that bothers me, you know, when
• 1:37:00
  I talk to atheists is it's hard to get them to actually engage.
• 1:37:04
  You know, like I put out my moral argument.
• 1:37:07
  I took about at least 10 hours to write the whole thing with
• 1:37:11
  the justifications, put it all in order and everything.
• 1:37:14
  And I have yet to get any kind of decent response to it.
• 1:37:19
  I don't know, maybe a few atheists out of probably 100
• 1:37:24
  have actually read through the whole thing.
• 1:37:26
  Maybe, maybe two of them. And I haven't gotten any actual
• 1:37:30
  decent critique of it. And I would admit if I got a
• 1:37:33
  decent critique, I want a decent.
• 1:37:35
  I just want somebody to actually read it and say This is why I
• 1:37:40
  disagree and and and give it a fair hearing and they won't do
• 1:37:43
  it. You know, it's not about reason,
• 1:37:46
  it's about rebellion. Absolutely.
• 1:37:52
  Well, Daniel, I do appreciate the time and closing here.
• 1:37:56
  Do you got any other thoughts to add?
• 1:37:59
  I would just say, you know to any atheists that know me and
• 1:38:02
  are listening to this, that even though I might give you a hard
• 1:38:06
  time, I just want to tell you that I love you and I give you a
• 1:38:11
  hard time. Because I understand you and I
• 1:38:14
  know that the people that I respected the most, the
• 1:38:19
  apologists that I respected the most, pushed back.
• 1:38:21
  You know, it was the Christians that actually had something to
• 1:38:26
  reply to me with and had reasons and and didn't just lay down.
• 1:38:32
  It was and and those types of Christians bothered me, but it
• 1:38:36
  was a begrudging respect that I had for them.
• 1:38:38
  And so I'm really speaking your language if you're listening to
• 1:38:42
  this as an atheist, because I know the language, because I
• 1:38:45
  spoke it for my whole life, you know, until I got saved and was
• 1:38:48
  born again. And so that's why I do what I
• 1:38:51
  do, the way I do it. And you know, to any atheist
• 1:38:54
  that wants to start over and you know have a a good conversation
• 1:38:59
  with me, that's what I really want is good conversations where
• 1:39:03
  we talk about our world views and we talk about what's true
• 1:39:07
  and we we tried to find what's true.
• 1:39:09
  And it really bothers me that atheists aren't all saved
• 1:39:14
  because I know I was one of the hard hearted, hardest hearted
• 1:39:18
  son of a gun out there. I was one of the meanest atheist
• 1:39:22
  that you you're going to find. And if I could get saved and
• 1:39:26
  know the love of Jesus Christ, I know that you can too.
• 1:39:29
  And it bothers me so much that you don't.
• 1:39:33
  And I talked to you guys because I care about you, not because
• 1:39:36
  it's fun to deal with you because it's not.
• 1:39:38
  Doesn't bring me any pleasure dealing with you.
• 1:39:40
  But I have a burden for you, and I feel like I kind of deserve to
• 1:39:44
  deal with you because I was you, I was like you, and I gave
• 1:39:47
  Christians such a hard time. So I put up with it, and I'm
• 1:39:51
  doing it because I care about you and I want you to get saved
• 1:39:53
  and know Jesus Christ just like I do.
• 1:39:57
  Hey, Ben. Thanks again, Daniel.
• 1:40:00
  Hey, thank you very much, Wendell.
• 1:40:01
  It was a real honor and privilege to get to share space
• 1:40:05
  with you. So thank you so much for having
• 1:40:06
  me. You're welcome and thanks
• 1:40:08
  everybody for joining us. You guys have a great night.