0:00
[MUSIC]
0:18
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast on your host Kyle Thompson.
0:22
Let's get into it.
0:23
All right, guys, today I've got a special guest on the podcast.
0:25
His name is Dr. Jonathan McLatchy, so this guy is a Christian apologist,
0:29
writer, speaker, and debater.
0:30
And he's actually done a few dozen debates against people defending atheism or
0:34
Islam or other worldviews.
0:36
He has a PhD in evolutionary biology, which makes him fairly unique in this space.
0:41
I mean, I'm not sure I've ever spoken to an apologist, a Christian apologist that
0:44
had a degree in evolutionary biology, but the main focus of his career and
0:48
really his work overall is to promote intelligent evidence based Christian faith.
0:53
And he kind of has a special emphasis on evidence of design in nature.
0:57
So guys, if this seems like it's going to be a heady podcast, it's because it's
1:00
going to be a heady podcast.
1:01
But just remember, I'm always constantly, I'm constantly telling you guys to cultivate
1:05
spiritual mental and physical resilience.
1:07
This is part of that mental resilience piece.
1:09
So morally, it's encouraging guys to read.
1:11
I'm encouraging them to read things that aren't just entertaining and aren't just fun, but
1:14
some things that are really, really difficult that you maybe have to chew through or
1:18
something like that.
1:19
And in this podcast, I'm going to tell you there's going to be certain segments, you
1:21
know, 30, 45 second segments where you're going to have to, you're going to be like,
1:24
wait, wait, what did he say?
1:25
I'm not sure I understood what he was saying.
1:27
And you'll just go back, just go back, rewind, listen to it again and try to get it in there
1:30
because guys, as he admitted towards the end of the podcast, he is not your entry level
1:34
apologists.
1:35
He is there for people that want to go to that next level with their Christian apologetics.
1:39
And I think he's done a fantastic job of doing that in his career.
1:42
And I really, really enjoyed my conversation with him.
1:44
So guys, we get into everything on this podcast.
1:46
We get into the fine tuning arguments.
1:48
We get into the reliability of the scriptures, the reliability of things that happen with
1:52
a resurrection and things that went on and acts and extra biblical evidence for all of
1:56
these things.
1:57
Guys, it is a super, super fun conversation.
1:59
I really hope you enjoy it, but I won't keep them from you any longer.
2:01
So without further ado, let's get into it.
2:04
Dr. Jonathan McLatchy, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
2:08
Great to be here.
2:09
Thanks for having me on.
2:10
I'm so happy to have you on because you could possibly be the smartest person we've ever
2:15
had on this podcast because you have your PhD in evolutionary biology.
2:19
And so that's kind of a very unique thing in terms of our audience.
2:22
But let's just go ahead and start as simply as we possibly can, as generic as we possibly
2:26
can.
2:27
You're a scientist.
2:28
You've studied science for a long time in your life, and then we'll get into kind of
2:31
how that's fed into what you do now as a career.
2:33
But in the most generic way possible, why did you become a scientist?
2:37
Sure.
2:38
So I did my undergraduate degree in forensic biology at the University of Strathmide.
2:42
I was interested to begin with the kind of criminology and the application of scientific
2:46
evidence to crime investigation, which is what forensic science deals with.
2:52
During my undergraduate years, I kind of fell in love with the molecular wonders of
2:58
the cell and the nanotechnology, which is so pervasive in biology and the information
3:04
storage, processing, retrieval, apparatus in the cell.
3:08
Became very impacted by the tremendous evidence that I observed in the world of the cell for
3:16
design, the sort of things that we're uncovering in the cell.
3:23
In my opinion, she'd end the debate on whether there's a God or not.
3:28
There are information processing sort of retrieval apparatus.
3:31
There's sliding clamps, and there's just a wonder of engineering genius.
3:41
And so that was, I think, what got me interested in biology.
3:45
And so then I subsequently was interested in studying more about life's origins, development
3:50
of the master's degree in evolutionary biology.
3:52
I interned for a year at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington, where I did a lot
3:57
of work in collaboration with Stephen Meyer.
4:01
And then I did another master's degree in molecular biology at Newcastle University.
4:04
And then finally, as you mentioned, I did a PhD in studying the evolution of the Euchardic
4:09
cell cycle at Newcastle University.
4:11
Okay, perhaps I even should have gone back a step because we'll certainly get more into
4:16
kind of how science and all the things therein have kind of led you to this faith that you
4:20
have today.
4:21
But I'm assuming that you came into your study of science, you know, your kind of higher
4:25
education study of science with some level of Christian faith already.
4:29
And then you kind of, is that fair to say, or is that something that maybe came after?
4:33
Kind of give us an idea of how you kind of came to faith and then what science did to
4:36
propel that.
4:37
Sure, so I was born in a Christian home.
4:41
My father's an elder in the church I grew up in.
4:44
And I grew up in a Bible-believing home in the same way that I grew up in a Remd Earth-believing
4:49
home, a dinosaur-believing home, and so forth.
4:53
Heliocentric-believing home.
4:56
And when I went to university, I became interested in epistemology, how we can determine or show
5:07
whether or not Christianity is true in comparison to other religious traditions.
5:13
So I interacted with various people of Islamic faith, Mormon faith, Jehovah's Witnesses,
5:18
I had a friend and undergraduate who was a Taoist.
5:21
So I became interested in those sorts of questions, so how we can know with confidence what is
5:27
actually true about the world.
5:29
And so, yeah, I was a Christian before my university education.
5:36
And the more I've studied the evidence for Christianity, both the evidence for and against
5:39
Christianity, the more I've grown in confidence that Christianity is indeed true.
5:47
And so, you're certainly not that odd of a bird and we'll get more into kind of how
5:51
faith and science have collided over the last several centuries.
5:54
But for a lot of folks, there's maybe this belief that they hold, so perhaps they do
6:00
what you do for a living or in something similar, and they believe that, but they don't feel
6:04
the need to go that extra step to become an apologist for the Christian faith.
6:07
So for you specifically, you know, that's just one of the things that you do in terms
6:12
of being an apologist.
6:13
You do debates and you write blogs and different things like that.
6:15
But why take that next step to actually argue in public about this type of a thing?
6:20
Yeah, so apologetics is maybe to do some definitional work first is the exercise of
6:29
defending your conclusions on the public square.
6:32
So there's a popular misconception about what apologetics actually is, which is to basically
6:37
define it as being synonymous with motivated reasoning, where you basically start with
6:41
the conclusion and then you're trying to find data to shore up what you already to believe
6:47
is true for other reasons.
6:50
The way that I would understand apologetics is the apologetics is what is done after the
6:55
results of open-ended inquiry.
6:57
So it's not contrary to open-ended inquiry, and it's not the same as open-ended inquiry
7:02
but it's co-extensive with open-ended inquiry.
7:04
So we do the open-ended inquiry into whether there's a god or not, whether Christianity
7:09
is true, and then we report the results of that fair and balanced inquiry.
7:14
I think that it's important if Christianity is indeed true as I think it is, that we explain
7:22
and discuss the reasons that bring us to those conclusions for public consumption.
7:31
So that is, I think the importance of doing apologetics.
7:34
I'm a very staunch evidentialist, I'm an evidentialist through and through.
7:38
I've sometimes discovered myself as a Christian rationalist.
7:42
I'm a Christian because only because I am persuaded by the public evidence that Christianity
7:47
is in fact true.
7:49
And so I try to educate people about the evidence before and against Christianity in the public
7:54
square.
7:55
Okay, so I've heard other Christians say on other podcasts that will remain nameless
7:59
for right now, they're just like, it should be self-evident if something is true.
8:04
There shouldn't be entire college courses and degrees and books and voluminous books
8:10
about something if you have to defend it and it's so difficult to do so.
8:15
So what would you say to someone like that that thinks that, hey, this should just be
8:19
second nature.
8:20
This should just be like, hey, two plus two equals four.
8:23
Like this isn't that big of a deal, like we shouldn't be spending this much time on
8:26
it.
8:27
First of all, there are plenty of truthful propositions in science, which are not obviously
8:33
true.
8:34
So for example, it is true that the chair I'm sitting on at the moment is mostly composed
8:38
of empty space because of the structure of the atom.
8:41
It's mostly empty space.
8:43
Is that obvious that the chair is mostly composed of empty space?
8:46
No, it's not, but we know scientifically that it's true.
8:52
Quantum physics, even particle physics, it's just not something which is obvious, but we
8:56
have good reason to believe it's true.
8:59
Now sometimes I get asked a related question, which you hinted at there, which is, well,
9:04
if Christianity is true, why does God require us to do so much work to uncover his existence?
9:08
Why does God require that we go and acquire PhDs and astrophysics and molecular biology
9:15
to uncover that he exists?
9:16
Why can't he just make it so much more immediately apparent to us in the same way that is immediately
9:21
apparent the sky is blue or something like that?
9:25
And what I would say to that is that I don't think that it is actually that difficult.
9:30
I think that it's made artificially more difficult than it ought to be by bad scholarship.
9:35
So for instance, amateur Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker, he says, I think it's in The Blind
9:41
Watchmaker, he says that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
9:47
And what he means by that is that prior to Darwin, it was obvious to people that there's
9:54
a God.
9:55
Things appeared to be designed and so the belief in God was a very widespread, very prevalent.
10:02
And then Darwin came along in 1859, he published The Ordinary Species, and he proposed a mechanism
10:08
by which you could explain the appearance of design without recourse to an actual designer.
10:13
In other words, it's only an illusion of design.
10:15
And he proposed an outer selection acting on chance variations, so it rise in the population
10:20
over time.
10:21
And at the time what genetic mutations were, of course, and so if Darwin is wrong about
10:28
that, as I actually maintained it, he is, then we're back to the drawing board and actually
10:32
we're back to where we were before Darwin, namely that things give the very strong appearance
10:37
of being designed for a purpose.
10:39
And actually, in light of the advances in molecular biology in the 20th and 21st centuries,
10:46
I think that we actually have far better grants for thinking that life appears to be designed
10:51
than people did even prior to Darwin.
10:53
Because at the time of Darwin, the cell was kind of viewed as a homogenous blob of protoplasm.
11:00
That was the view of Thomas Andrew Huxley.
11:02
And what we now understand about the cell is that it is a set of machines where you have
11:11
higher level objectives being accomplished by multiple well-matched interacting components
11:18
that work together to accomplish those higher level objectives.
11:22
And we know now about the information content of the cell and so forth, all of which I think
11:27
is not particularly surprising on the design hypothesis but wildly surprising on the false
11:32
of the design hypothesis.
11:33
And therefore, it points, I think, quite forcefully to intelligent design being the best explanation.
11:38
Well, I want to dig more into intelligent design here in just a second, but just to back up
11:42
a step or two, we have been convinced by society, and I'm painting with a broad brush here,
11:47
so just forgive me, but we've been convincing this kind of post-Christian secular aids that
11:51
we live in, that Christianity and science have always been at odds.
11:55
And it's certainly still so today, which is ridiculous if you know anything about the
11:58
history of science and the history of the church, but we can digress just a little bit.
12:02
But for you personally, just for Jonathan, right?
12:05
How do you personally square being a scientist, specifically an evolutionary biologist and
12:11
a Christian, whenever the scientific community, as it were, tells you that those two things
12:16
are oil and water?
12:18
Yeah, I mean, I found it to be the complete opposite where the science is actually confirmed
12:26
theism.
12:27
I was actually often bewildered in my undergraduate degree at how one could go through a four-year
12:35
university program in the natural sciences to come out in the atheist at the other end.
12:39
Because the evidence from the natural sciences for theism, both from the physical sciences
12:43
as well as the life sciences, seems to me to be overwhelmingly in favor of the truth of
12:47
the theism.
12:48
So we don't only have the information content of the cell and the irritable complex nanotechnology,
12:55
as I mentioned before, but also in the physical sciences, we have things like the fine-tuning
12:59
of the universe for life, not just as we know it, but life of any form to exist anywhere
13:04
at any time in our universe.
13:05
So for example, the cosmological constant, which determines how rapidly the universe
13:11
expands if it were to vary so much as a hairsbrat.
13:14
I mean, the usual value that's given in the literature is a one-part and ten-grace, the
13:19
120th power, then either the universe would expand so rapidly, you would only ever get
13:24
the two lightest elements of hydrogen and helium, or you get a big current scenario.
13:29
And in either way, either a case, there's no life.
13:33
And you've got a ratio of the strong wind nuclear forces, there's the gravitational
13:40
constant and so forth, all of which is the initial low entropy conditions, the universe,
13:45
in fact, Roger Penrose at Oxford, who's not a Christian or a Theis, he's an agnostic,
13:50
mathematical physicist, has shown that the likelihood of getting the initial low entropy
13:56
conditions of our universe is something like one-part and ten, raised to the ten, raised
14:02
to the hundred and twenty-third power.
14:03
So in the denominator, there's actually ten to the hundred and twenty-three zeros, which
14:07
is more zeros after the one, than subatomic particles in the known universe, which is
14:11
ten to the eighty.
14:12
So you would even have enough atoms in the universe to write down the number that big.
14:16
So that's level of fine-tuning that we're dealing with.
14:18
And when you couple that with the biological evidence of the information content of DNA
14:22
and RNA and so forth, I think you have a very powerful cumulative argument for the design
14:27
hypothesis.
14:28
I keep wanting to go backwards because you keep saying awesome things, and I'm like,
14:31
"Oh, I want to ask you about this now, so I'm going to go backward once, and then hopefully
14:34
we can keep going forward for the rest of this conversation," but you brought up something
14:36
very interesting, which is how could somebody go through these programs and come out on
14:39
the other end in atheists?
14:41
For a lot of people, it seems like they agree with everything, right, and you're holding
14:44
your leftist tears tumbler, so good examples, like a guy like Ben Shapiro, like Ben Shapiro
14:48
believes in the Old Testament, believes in the Scriptures, but then his belief kind of
14:52
stops at Jesus.
14:53
He just can't get over that next hump, that Jesus is the Son of God, right?
14:56
He is the Messiah that is foretold about by the prophets.
15:00
So for you, if you had to kind of put your finger on it, I don't know if you've talked
15:03
to guys like this, what is that thing?
15:05
They agree with you on all of that, they agree with you on the science, they agree with you
15:08
on the data, and the mathematics, but they just can't get to the designer, they can't
15:14
get to that, there's a creator, there's an unmoved mover, if you will.
15:19
Yeah, so I think, there's not going to be a one-size-fits-all, it's going to be different
15:25
for different people.
15:26
For some people, it's that they're uncomfortable with the idea of a cosmic designer.
15:35
For example, and Richard Lewontin has a very famous quote, excuse me if we can pull it
15:43
up here.
15:46
So Richard Lewontin is a very famous biologist, and he says, "Our willingness to accept scientific
15:53
claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle
15:58
between science and the supernatural.
16:00
We take the side of science, in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs,
16:03
in spite of its failure to fulfill many of his extravagant promises of health and life,
16:07
in spite of the tolerance of the science of a community for unsubstantially to just those
16:10
stories, because we have a prior commitment to commitment to materialism.
16:14
It's not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material
16:17
explanation of the phenomena world, but on the contrary, that we are forced to by our
16:22
a priori adherence, so it material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and
16:26
a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter
16:31
how mystifying to be uninitiated.
16:33
Moreover, that materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.
16:37
The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone you could believe in God
16:40
could believe in anything.
16:41
To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature
16:45
may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."
16:48
So what Richard Lewington is saying there, and this is I think a sentiment that is shared
16:52
by many scientists, is that they are limited to the paradigm of methodological naturalism,
17:00
which is to say that science can only invoke natural explanations for natural phenomena,
17:05
and there's some rationale to that, there's some logic to that, because we don't want
17:11
to suddenly invoke a miracle whenever we can't explain something, right?
17:15
So if we can't explain why there's thunder or lightning, for example, therefore it must
17:19
be the gods fighting or something like that, it must be Thor or Zeus or whatever.
17:28
And that of course is not the sort of approach that we want to take.
17:35
And there's I think a common view that invoking God to explain natural phenomena is to appeal
17:41
to a God of the gaps type argument, which is an argument for ignorance based on what
17:45
we do know, but what we don't know, we don't understand feature X, therefore we'll just
17:49
plug in God or an intelligent designer and see as a placeholder for that of which we're
17:53
ignorant.
17:54
And what I'd say to that is intelligent design and the case for the existence of God doesn't
17:59
really work that way.
18:01
What we're doing rather is building a positive inferential argument to say, well, that these
18:06
sorts of features of the world, namely biological information, the fine tuning of the laws and
18:11
causes permit life such as ourselves is quite surprising on the naturalistic hypothesis,
18:17
but it's not at all surprising on the design and theistic hypothesis.
18:22
And so based upon the top heaviness of that likelihood ratio, we are compelled cumulatively
18:29
to accept the design hypothesis.
18:32
So to get further into the design hypothesis, let's go a little bit into the weeds here,
18:38
because I feel like against atheism, I agree with a guy like Eric Metaxis that they feel
18:42
like the fine tuning argument is the one that atheists really have to reckon with the most.
18:47
If they are strict materialists, like they really have to reckon with that.
18:51
So in your opinion, I know we can't go into all the different details because this isn't
18:54
going to be a 10 part podcast, but why is the fine tuning of the universe?
18:59
Why is that the most compelling evidence for there to be some sort of a creator?
19:03
Yeah, I actually think the biological evidence is even more compelling, but yeah, the fine
19:07
tuning argument is also compelling.
19:09
So let's go into both.
19:10
Yeah, you just go with whatever you want.
19:12
Yeah.
19:13
So yeah, and it's a cumulative argument.
19:14
So the case for theism has not only explanatory power to explain the fine tuning and the biological
19:21
design singularly individually, but also has the explanatory scope to explain all of the
19:26
relevant data, explaining multiple lines, multiple disciplines, multiple lines of evidence,
19:32
spanning multiple disciplines.
19:34
So when it comes to the fine tuning, there are basically three possible categories of
19:41
explanation for any natural phenomenon.
19:43
One is the chance hypothesis.
19:45
It just happened by a stroke of luck.
19:47
One is the physical necessity hypothesis happens by law like regularities.
19:53
And third is a design hypothesis, or you could have some sort of combination thereof.
19:57
Now in terms of the natural law hypothesis, to explain the fine tuning, so that would
20:02
be to say that, well, perhaps there's some sort of unknown theory of everything, which
20:09
undergirds natural law such that it constrains the constants to be within a much narrower
20:16
range than they could conceivably occupy.
20:18
So perhaps the physical constants couldn't actually vary.
20:24
Perhaps they're the way they are at a physical necessity, or perhaps they are much more constrained
20:28
than we realize as a result of some sort of underlying physical principle or theory of
20:32
everything, something along those lines.
20:34
And what I'd say to that is that even if that is the case, and there's actually no reason
20:39
to think that it is, as well as suppose that it is, then you've only shifted the problem
20:43
back one step, right?
20:45
Because then you still have to explain the fine tuning in the theory of everything or
20:48
the underlying principle that results in the constants and parameters of the universe being
20:53
that which is conducive to life.
20:54
So you don't actually solve the problem.
20:55
You still are left with a fine tuning problem.
20:59
And so then that leaves us with two remaining explanations, namely the theistic design hypothesis
21:05
or the chance hypothesis.
21:06
And the most popular incarnation of the chance hypothesis is the multiverse scenario, right?
21:14
And that's generally combined with the anthropic principle, which is to say that, well, we
21:20
can't exist in any other universe because we can live in any other universe.
21:25
So it's not hugely surprising that we happen to be in the universe that's conducive to
21:28
life.
21:29
And if you combine that with the multiverse scenario, then you can say, well, there's
21:32
some sort of observer selection effect that we can be in any of the other universes.
21:39
So it's not surprising if you have that that amount of problems that resources that we
21:42
happen to be in the one that's conducive to life.
21:45
Now what would I say to that?
21:46
Well, there's a number of responses to that.
21:49
One of them is the so-called Boltzmann brain problem, which is named after a very famous
21:54
Austrian physicist, and it's a little abstract, so I apologize for that, but basically the
22:00
idea is that it actually becomes much more likely than that you would get a finely-changed
22:09
universe that's conducive to complex life forms such as ourselves.
22:12
It's much more likely than that that you would get a universe that's inhabited by a single
22:17
brain that fluctuates into existence out of the quantum vacuum.
22:22
And because as much more likely if you're talking about those well and probabilities,
22:27
you'd actually actualize that sort of low patch of order long before you get the sort
22:32
of fine-tuning that we're dealing with when it comes to the origins of life.
22:35
So actually, that undermines the argument from the observer selection effect, because
22:41
it's much more likely that we'd be in one of those universes where there's just a brain
22:45
that fluctuates into existence out of the quantum vacuum.
22:48
So that's one response to that.
22:50
So those reduce the plausibility of those competing explanations, namely the law like
22:56
regularities and the chance they policies, and therefore in turn redistributes the probabilities
23:01
such that the probability of the design thesis increases.
23:04
Flowing ad bunted on metrics that look great, till the CFO sees them, that's bullspend.
23:09
And marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions.
23:13
I remember telling my boss, "It'll be good for the brand."
23:17
The leads were slow, yeah, it wasn't.
23:21
Cut the bullspend.
23:22
LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more.
23:26
Advertise on LinkedIn.
23:27
Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit, go to linkedin.com/campaign
23:32
terms and conditions apply.
23:33
Well, let's talk about the multiverse that you brought up there a little bit, because
23:36
I remember the first time I heard that, I thought someone was kidding.
23:39
Like I thought they were absolutely kidding, because that seems to, you know, balk at just
23:44
common reason, but at the same time, I'm not sure I've seen a lot of overwhelming data
23:49
that you even suggest that that is a legitimate hypothesis.
23:52
So if you could give us maybe a little bit more detail on that, because, you know, Joe
23:56
Rogan will just mention it out of hand on this podcast, and people are like, "Oh, yeah,
24:00
multiverse.
24:01
That's probably realistic."
24:02
What is the theory?
24:03
And is there anything that's grounding it to reality?
24:05
Yeah, so there are some versions of string theory, which, or there are some versions of
24:14
inflationary cosmology, rather, which basically predict a multiverse or something like that.
24:21
So it's not without any scientific basis.
24:25
And this isn't my area of expertise, though, however, let's suppose that the multiverse
24:32
does exist.
24:33
Well, that actually doesn't help, it doesn't necessarily help to resolve the design hypothesis.
24:39
And here's why.
24:42
Because you require the physical constants to vary within those universes.
24:47
So it's not just any multiverse that we'll do to solve the fine gene problem.
24:50
But if they're all the same constants as in our universe, then you haven't solved the
24:53
problem.
24:54
So there's actually got to be some level of fine tuning for the multiverse, because you
24:57
need to actually vary the constants across probabilistic space in order to vary them
25:02
sufficiently to actually cover the probabilistic space and make it more likely that a universe
25:09
such as ourselves would exist.
25:13
Now another issue is, of course, that all the parallel universes would have to be based
25:20
on the same physics as our universe, in order to be probabilistic, really relevant to our
25:25
universe, to the fine tuning of our universe.
25:27
So yeah, so as I said, I'm not an expert on inflationary cosmology and so forth to be
25:33
able to assess the plausibility of the multiverse, though I've met many physicists who say that
25:38
it's quite plausible and actually suggested by certain interpretations of physical theories.
25:43
But even supposing that to be the case, I don't think that it necessarily resolves the
25:47
fine tuning problem.
25:48
And also, given the biological evidence of design, I think you have a strong cumulative
25:53
arguments for preferring the theistic design hypothesis.
25:56
Okay.
25:57
You also brought up miracles a second ago, and you know, you hear a lot of people, especially
26:01
on the scientific side of things like, oh, you know, we can't explain that right now.
26:05
But eventually science will allow us to be able to explain that for me in kind of where
26:10
I'm at, where I sit in the world, I feel like a miracle.
26:12
Like if God created the physical world that he could do his supernatural miracles, utilizing
26:19
the physical world.
26:21
So when is there maybe a little bit of a misunderstanding as to what a miracle is, because when you
26:25
say the word miracle, it seems like it's happening outside of space and outside of time and outside
26:30
of matter and those types of things.
26:31
But is it a more reasonable approach to say that God can absolutely use the world that
26:35
he's created to create these things that seem like miracles, but eventually science will
26:39
be able to quote unquote explain it.
26:41
Is that a kind of a fair way of looking at it?
26:43
Yeah, I suppose.
26:44
I mean, I would tend to distinguish between providence and a miracle.
26:49
So so if I pray, because I let's say I'm in financial need and I pray for God to send
26:54
resources and then, and then I get a check in the male spontaneous way, right?
26:59
That's providence.
27:00
That's not a miracle, right?
27:01
Because that hasn't gone against any of the regularities of nature, it hasn't disrupted
27:07
any of the regularities of nature.
27:09
Whereas if someone rises from the dead as in Jesus case or Lazarus case, that's a miracle
27:15
because that goes against what happens when nature is left to itself, right?
27:20
It violates the second law of thermodynamics, which says that the usable energy in the universe
27:24
must always decrease.
27:27
And that's why you don't get corpses coming back from the dead is because it violates
27:30
the second law of thermodynamics.
27:33
So if someone rises from the dead or if someone that was blind or whatever is spontaneously
27:41
healed, then that would be an example of a miracle that is so natural law describes what
27:48
happens in nature when nature is left to itself.
27:50
It doesn't tell us anything about what happens when nature is not left to itself.
27:54
And if we have independent reason to believe that God exists, then I would argue that miracles
27:58
are at least possible because you have someone to actually perform the miracle, a miracle
28:05
by definition is an act of divine fear.
28:09
And we also, I would argue, in the case of Jesus' resurrection, for instance, have independent
28:14
reason to believe that God plausibly has motivation for raising Jesus' answer specifically from
28:18
the dead.
28:19
So people often say, "Well, a miracle by definition is the least plausible explanation for the
28:25
data," and so you can't invoke a miracle as the best explanation as an historian because
28:31
an historian must always favor the most probable explanation, and a miracle by definition is
28:35
the least probable explanation.
28:38
And that's taking a very frequentist approach where, "Well, we don't observe miracles happening."
28:43
And that sort of style of argument goes back to David Hymn, a very famous Scottish philosopher,
28:49
and has modern adherence, a very many modern adherence.
28:53
Far airman, for example, in his debates on the resurrection, makes that approach.
28:58
Now, there's a number of problems with that approach.
29:01
One is that, first of all, if a miracle is used as a sign, which is unequivocally in
29:10
New Testament theology, John talks about the signs that Jesus performed, for example.
29:14
And Paul talks about the signs of an apostle that were done in the midst of the Corinthians,
29:19
and Corinthians 12, which is chapter 11, thanks to chapter 11, he talks about the signs of
29:26
an apostle that were done in the midst of them.
29:32
And so if miracles are used as signs, then it wouldn't be much of a sign if it was something
29:38
that happened on a routine basis.
29:40
So for miracles to be functioned as signs, predicts that you won't observe them very
29:44
frequently.
29:45
So you can't use the fact that they're not observed very frequently as evidence against
29:49
miracles as signs if they're being used as signs explicitly predicts that you will not
29:55
observe them frequently.
29:56
Furthermore, just because the probability, so the prior probability to the prior probability
30:02
is a Bayesian term, it's a statistics term, which describes the probability of a particular
30:07
thing happening just given the background information alone.
30:11
Now when it comes to, let's say that we hypothesize the resurrection of any old Joe Blow that
30:19
we select from the obituary section of today's newspaper, just take someone at random and
30:26
say, "What's the prior probability this individual is going to be resurrected?"
30:29
It's very small, it's astronomically small, that they're going to be resurrected.
30:34
And so you would require a lot of evidence to corroborate that that person actually
30:39
nourish from the dead because the prior probability of it is so intesimally small.
30:43
Now it doesn't follow though from that, the prior probability in Jesus' case is similarly
30:50
low, because you could have independent reason to believe that God has special motivation
30:59
for raising Jesus and Lazarus specifically from the dead.
31:01
And I would argue that case from the likes of Messianic prophecy, for instance, and also
31:07
the trilemma argument, which is developed by C.S. Lewis, which is to say that Jesus claimed
31:14
to be God, I think there's good historical evidence for that.
31:16
If he claimed to be God, then it's very difficult to be honestly wrong about you being the creator
31:21
of the universe unless you're completely nuts.
31:23
And Jesus doesn't seem to have been someone who was completely insane.
31:26
And so, and then that leaves us with, okay, he really wants to be claimed to be, or he
31:30
lied about it.
31:31
And Jesus, of course, went about preaching that he was going to be killed for his Messianic
31:38
and divine self-claims.
31:39
And there's good evidence that he very deliberately and intentionally set his face towards doing
31:45
so.
31:46
And of course, he was crucified in the most inhumane way possible.
31:49
In fact, our word excruciating comes from the Latin excruciatos, meaning out of the cross.
31:53
So that suggests, I think strongly, that he was at least sincere in his belief.
31:58
And so having lowered the plausibility of those two remaining explanations that increases
32:03
the likelihood of the remaining explanation, namely that he really was to be said to us,
32:07
which then contributes to our assessment of the probability of Jesus rationing from the
32:12
debt, which is something which is, by the way, predicted of the messiah in his I-5310
32:16
that he would be raised from the debt.
32:19
So, hopefully that is at least a start to answering.
32:22
Struggling with weight loss?
32:23
Prolon's five-day fasting mimicking diet is a clinically developed nutrition program designed
32:28
to promote fat loss while protecting lean body mass.
32:31
Developed at USC's Longevity Institute, it assists the body in entering a fasting like
32:35
state that helps reset metabolism and target visceral fat.
32:39
In just five days, Prolon offers a science-backed approach to weight loss without extreme restriction
32:44
or guesswork.
32:45
Get 15% off plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe at prolonlife.com/now.
32:49
Yeah, I appreciate you going into that much detail and we're going to get more into the
32:53
resurrection and the reliability of kind of that resurrection story here in just a bit.
32:58
But I'd be remiss if we skipped all the way there without talking about just the reliability
33:01
of the scriptures in general, because there's a lot of, a lot of hate that's being made.
33:06
Even in my church, I've heard people talk about, well, we can't exactly trust the scriptures
33:10
because it's been translated so many times and we don't have any of the original documents
33:13
and things like that.
33:14
But I'm sure that's come up for you and a lot of your debates and a lot of your study.
33:18
So for us as 2021 Christians, how can we believe that the scriptures that we have on
33:24
our phones or sitting on our bookshelves or in our car or something like that, are the
33:27
reliable scriptures?
33:29
Sure.
33:30
So there's, of course, that's a very broad topic so we can only scrap the surface of
33:34
that right here, right?
33:36
And unfortunately, there's no kind of silver bullet where you've got like this one piece
33:40
of evidence that's going to seal the deal, but it's going to be a cumulative argument.
33:44
And this is actually the approach that I would take to arguing for the resurrection in a
33:47
nutshell.
33:48
So whether I would take to arguing for the resurrection of Jesus historically, it would
33:52
be to say, firstly, we have good reason to believe that the Gospels and Acts accurately
33:58
reflect the testimony of credible eyewitnesses.
34:02
And therefore, if that is the case, and I'll show in a moment a few reasons why I think
34:06
it's the case, then we have to take seriously that the resurrection reports in the Gospels
34:12
and Acts actually reflect what was being claimed by the Jerusalem Apostles, by Jesus' original
34:20
disciples, by the living witnesses of Jesus' resurrection.
34:24
And that is what we need to explain when we're trying to explain the evidence.
34:27
So when anyone makes any sort of testimony or claim, there are three and only three possible
34:32
explanations for why they made that claim.
34:34
One is that it's correct, and that's why they're claiming it.
34:37
One is that they're lying about it, and one is that they're honestly mistaken.
34:42
And these are mutually exhaustive.
34:45
And when it comes to the resurrection testimonies in the Gospels and Acts, these are the source
34:51
of claims that are very difficult to be honestly mistaken about.
34:55
They are multi-sensor in character, involving multiple sensory modes, not just individual
35:02
sightings, but group sightings, group conversations with Jesus, physical contact with Jesus, long
35:07
discourses with Jesus, eating breakfast with Jesus on the shore of the sea of Galilee.
35:11
They are very diverse.
35:12
They occur with a prior appointment in different locations.
35:16
According to Acts, one is extended course support to be a time period, and so it wasn't
35:21
just a brief and confusing episode.
35:23
That's the sort of thing that's very difficult to be honestly wrong about.
35:28
And then there's a whole bunch of other arguments against the hypothesis that they were deliberately
35:33
lying about it.
35:34
So that then reduces those two competing explanations, and in turn, redistributes the
35:40
probability such that the probability of Jesus actually rising from the dead increases significantly.
35:45
So how then would I substantiate that crucial premise that the Gospels indeed reflect the
35:49
testimony of credible eyewitnesses?
35:51
Well, just a few points here, and of course, one could talk for hours about this, so we're
35:56
just going to be able to script the service.
35:58
But one category of evidence I would use is the argument from undesigned coincidences
36:04
in the Gospels.
36:05
And this is a type of internal evidence that's internal to the Gospels, which actually
36:10
helps support and confirms there are substantial trustworthiness.
36:14
So to take an example, this is best explained by a big of an example, if you go over to
36:18
John chapter 6 and verse 5, this is the set up for the fitting of the 5,000 miracle.
36:24
And verse 5, it says, "Lifting up his eyes then and seeing that a large crowd was coming
36:29
toward him, Jesus said to Philip, 'Where are we to buy bread so that these people may
36:33
eat?'"
36:34
Now, this raises a question in the mind of the audience.
36:39
Why does Jesus turn to Philip here in particular?
36:41
Philip's a fairly minor character in the Gospels.
36:43
Why not say turn to Judas Iscari, who has turned to the money bag or something?
36:47
Well, if he turned to chapter 12 of John's Gospels, this is six chapters removed, completely
36:52
different contexts, so on by different passages where there were some Jews at the feast who
36:56
wanted to speak to Jesus.
36:57
So they came to Philip, and then to ask, I think he speaks to Jesus, and it just adds
37:01
the parentheses that Philip was from Betsyla in Galilee, very incidental, casual comment.
37:05
Now, if we go over to Luke's account in chapter 9, this is the parallel of the fitting of
37:10
the 5,000 miracle.
37:12
And we have the set up for the fitting of the 5,000, and then it says, "On the return,
37:18
the apostles told him only had done, and he took them and withdrew apart to a town called
37:23
the side," and that's where the fitting of the 5,000 takes place.
37:25
So we can actually put the pieces together from John 6, from John 12, and Luke 9, where
37:30
Luke doesn't mention Philip in this context at all.
37:36
John doesn't mention beside it as the setting of the miracle story, and it's only in John
37:39
12, it's also in John 1, that we learn that beside it is Philip's hometown.
37:44
So what's our explanation then for why Jesus speaks to Philip in John 6, 5?
37:47
Well, Philip's the local guy, he knows where the shops are divided by bread.
37:51
That's not the sort of pattern that fits particularly well on the hypothesis that these
37:57
are fictionalized accounts, this actually is better predicted on the hypothesis of historical
38:04
reportage, that the gospels are actually giving us a historical report of what actually happened.
38:11
And that's a very specific detail also, which disciples Jesus turned to at the fitting of
38:16
the 5,000.
38:17
So it supports, doesn't prove, but it supports that the gospels are actually based on eyewitness
38:22
testimony.
38:24
Another example of that, also relating to the fitting of the 5,000.
38:27
So there's an account of the fitting of the 5,000 in Mark, in chapter number 6.
38:33
And we read that the apostles returned to Jesus and told them all they had done a taut,
38:38
and he said to them, "Come away by yourselves to a desolate place, and rest a while for
38:41
many who were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat."
38:44
That's verse 30 and 31.
38:47
And so we learn that the place is very busy, there's hustle and bustle, people coming and
38:52
going so they can't find anywhere to eat in quiet, peace and quiet, so they go to a desolate
38:58
place.
38:59
And then later in the chapter, we learn that in verse 39, that Jesus commanded them all
39:05
to sit down in grips on the green grass.
39:07
Now, it's a very descriptive term, the green grass, Mark is the only gospel that gives
39:13
us that detail.
39:15
And now about the green grass, so in Palestine, the grass actually throughout the majority
39:21
of the year is actually brown, not green, except a very narrow window of time because
39:26
of the higher levels of rainfall during the spring around the time of Passover.
39:30
And so if you look over it back at John 6 and verse 4, John doesn't tell us about the
39:36
green grass and doesn't tell us about the people coming and going, indicating the hustle
39:40
and bustle and the busyness of the place, but he does mention that the Passover, the
39:44
feast of the Jews was ahead, which then explains and illuminates why it's so busy and why the
39:50
grass is green.
39:51
Again, the casualness of those connections tends to support the trustworthiness of those
39:58
accounts.
40:00
Another example is in John 12, this is where we have the set up for the fitting of the
40:06
5000, sorry, John 12, where we have the triumphal entries and the set up for the triumphal
40:13
entry.
40:14
So it says, chapter 12 verse 1, 6 is for the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Beth and
40:18
where Lazarus was in Jesus' duration of the dead.
40:22
And so although all four gospels mention the triumphal entry, John is the only gospel
40:28
that gives us the time stamp that Jesus approached Bethany with sixes for Passover, John is also
40:33
the only gospel that mentions in verse 12, the next day, the large card that comes to
40:38
the feast, the hair that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.
40:40
So John is the only gospel that mentions that Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on the back of
40:44
Adonke the following day after he arrived in Bethany and that was five days before Passover,
40:49
right, the next day, after six days before it is five days before the Passover.
40:52
Now, if we go over to Mark's account, this is the parallel account in Mark's gospel,
40:58
we have the parallel account and Mark actually, unlike John, he telescopes or collapses a
41:09
narrative.
41:10
And he doesn't mention Jesus arrived in Bethany the night before and it wasn't till the morning
41:14
he sent the samples to French to cult, rather, it simply says, "When they drew near to Jerusalem,
41:18
the Bethany and Beth knew many of all of us.
41:20
Jesus sent two of his disciples and sent to them, go into the village in front of view
41:23
and immediately as you enter it, you'll find a cult sign which no one has ever sent, untie
41:27
it and bring it, etc."
41:29
And then let's just assume for the sake of argument that John is correct, that Jesus
41:32
arrives in Bethany five days before Passover, a detail that's specific to John.
41:37
If we go to verse 11 of Mark 11, it says, "He entered Jerusalem, went to the temple, when
41:41
he rose her into everything, and it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelfth."
41:46
And then, so that would be if John is correct, five days of the evening, five days before
41:50
Passover.
41:51
Now, in verse 12, it says, "On the following day, when they came from Bethany was hungry,
41:54
that would be the morning, four days before Passover, if John is correct."
41:59
Verse 19, "When evening came, they went out of the city, if John is correct, that's the
42:02
evening, four days before Passover."
42:05
Verse 20, "As they passed by in the morning, they saw the picture of whether the way to
42:08
its roots, that would be if John is correct, the morning, three days before Passover."
42:12
Then in chapter 13, you have the Olivet Discourse, where Jesus has a conversation with his disciples
42:16
on the Mount of Olives, which is midway between Jerusalem, where he's been all day, and Bethany
42:20
where his accommodation is for the night.
42:22
So we can assume, I think, reasonably, that this is him on his way home to Bethany as
42:26
to his accommodation.
42:27
This is the evening, three days before Passover.
42:30
And then you turn to chapter 14, verse 1, "It was now two days before the Passover.
42:36
So it synchronizes exactly as you would expect, given the chronology that's specific to John.
42:41
And that's just the pinnacle of the iceberg.
42:44
There is dozens upon dozens of those, and there's not only undesired coincidences like
42:48
those, and there's dozens of those, but there's also extra-biblical confirmations of details
42:53
in the gospels.
42:55
And there's plenty of those as well.
42:57
So just to take one example quickly, and there's plenty of those I can give.
43:02
I have an article, by the way, on my website, where I discuss quite a number of those.
43:06
One of those is, if you go to Matthew chapter 2, this is the 70th account.
43:13
And Joseph and Jesus and Mary have fled to Egypt to escape from Herod the Great, who
43:21
tries to kill Jesus.
43:23
And then Herod the Great passes away, most scholars think around 4 B.C., and Joseph is
43:29
now on his way back to Judea, having hit Laren that Herod the Great is dead.
43:34
And it would be pretty reasonable inference that Herod the Great's eldest son, Herod
43:40
Arkelayus would be running in his father's stand, and that Herod the Great has died.
43:44
So in that knowledge, Joseph and Mary Jesus are on their way back to Judea.
43:49
And then suddenly he learns that Herod Arkelayus is now running in place of his father Herod.
43:55
So now he's very afraid to go to Judea.
43:58
So instead he goes to Galilee instead.
44:02
And it turns out if you read Josephus, it was a famous first century Jewish historian,
44:07
that Herod the Great following his death had this territory divided among his sons, three
44:11
of his sons.
44:12
Herod Arkelayus began to reign in Judea, and Galilee was ruled by his younger brother,
44:18
Herod Antipas.
44:19
And then there was also another brother called Philip.
44:21
So that explains then, first of all, why he could go to Galilee to evade Arkelayus because
44:27
there was a different guy ruling in Galilee, which hadn't been the case during Herod the
44:30
Great's reign.
44:32
And furthermore, why is he so afraid of Arkelayus is the one time he's mentioned in the entire
44:38
Bible?
44:39
Well, if you read Josephus, we learned that one of the last things Herod the Great did
44:42
before his death was to have certain Jews executed for their part in having removed the Roman
44:47
eagle from the Jewish temple because of its violation of the Second Commandment about
44:51
having german images.
44:52
And Herod the Great found it who was responsible and had them killed, burned to death.
44:58
And then Herod the Great passed away around 4 BC, and then the Arkelayus began to reign
45:03
in Judea.
45:04
There was an influx of the festival ruled around, so there was an influx of Jewish pilgrims
45:09
coming in from the Feast of Passover, and a Jewish mob picked up stones, and they struck
45:15
up an argument with the Griffith Roman soldiers for what just happened, and picked up stones
45:19
and they stoned the Roman soldiers to death.
45:22
And then they picked up their sacrifices to see if his talents and ran into the Jewish
45:26
temple.
45:27
And Arkelayus was enraged that they started up on his government, so he rounded up his
45:31
entire army.
45:32
He sent the entire army upon the Jewish temple and told them don't let anyone leave or enter
45:36
the temple.
45:37
I told the horsemen, he surrounded the temple with the horsemen.
45:39
He sent the food soldiers into the temple and told them kill everyone you find.
45:42
So he massacred 3,000 Jews in the Jewish temple.
45:46
And then announced to those out with the temple, Passover is cancelled, returned to your homes.
45:50
So you can imagine Joseph on his way back from Egypt encountering this massive fleeing pilgrims
45:54
coming out of Judea, hearing what just happened and being very afraid to go there.
45:58
And so going to Galilee and said, it gives the backstory of what's going on in the biblical
46:02
account.
46:03
And that's just the pinnacle of the iceberg.
46:04
Well, I appreciate you going into all those different subtleties, because I had to be honest,
46:07
I had never really even thought of reading the scriptures in that way, because you look
46:10
at parts in Mark and you're like, okay, that can be corroborated here, or there's a little
46:14
bit of difference here or there.
46:15
But I want to get more into the stuff that you were talking about, the extra biblical
46:18
things that we find that evidence, because I saw that article on the website will make
46:21
sure that that's here in the show notes.
46:22
So guys can see those examples.
46:24
I feel like I don't ever run into pastors, you know, whether they're mine or pastors that
46:29
I listen to that talk about things that are outside the Bible.
46:32
Now that maybe because, you know, we should go with the reliability of the scriptures and
46:36
maybe they believe the scriptures are completely true.
46:39
And you know, that's how you should believe whatever the situation is, but why do you
46:42
feel like more people don't know that Josephus even exists and his writings exist and corroborates
46:48
a lot of things from scriptures, because I feel like that deals with one of the atheist
46:51
arguments, which is like, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and it's a, you know, it's a self-confirming
46:56
circle to where it's like you're reading the scripture, but you're believing in the scripture
46:59
based on faith and nothing else.
47:01
Does that kind of make sense in terms of like, why we don't focus on the extra biblical accounts
47:04
as much?
47:05
Yeah, I think it's unfortunate.
47:07
I think that every Christian should read Josephus, at least certain portions of Josephus.
47:14
I think that it provides a lot of illumination into what's going on in the biblical narrative.
47:18
Also helps to clarify some issues where there are alleged problems.
47:21
One example of that is in Mark 10, where Jesus is giving teaching on divorce and remarriage
47:27
and the disciples ask him again about this matter in the house, and he says, if a man
47:32
divorces his wife, a man is another, he commits adultery against her, and if a woman commit
47:38
to divorce is her husband, a man is another, she commits adultery against her husband.
47:43
This gives rise to a popular skeptical objection, namely, well, Jewish law made no provision
47:50
for a man's divorce's wife, but no provision for a wife to divorce her husband.
47:54
So is Jesus, is Mark here, like, is he deliberately phaging Jesus teaching to make it more suitable
47:59
for a Roman audience, where will he initiate divorce proceedings, or is he just a Gentile
48:05
who's ignorant of Jewish law, or something like that?
48:08
Well, it turns out, if you read Josephus, he tells us that Herodias took it upon herself
48:13
to confound the laws of her country.
48:16
She divorced her first husband to happen to be Philip, Herod's brother, in order to marry
48:20
Herod Antipas.
48:22
And so then now, where was Herod Antipas' tetrarch?
48:26
He was tetrarch of Galilee.
48:27
And if you read, that's just where Jesus has been preaching.
48:30
And actually, if you look at the paralachand in Matthew 19, there are crowds that follow
48:33
him from Galilee, and they're listening to his teaching.
48:36
So he's teaching an audience from Galilee, and he throws in this statement, "If a woman
48:44
divorced her husband to marry another, she commits adultery against her husband."
48:47
And right at that time, Herodias had taken upon herself to confound the laws of the Jewish
48:53
nation, and she divorced Herod Antipas, divorced Philip, in order to marry Herod Antipas, and
49:00
Philip's brother.
49:02
And so that you can also use these extra biblical sources to corroborate aspects of the biblical
49:08
narrative.
49:09
Also, things that are somewhat confusing or surprising, like, for instance, in Acts 19,
49:15
after the rite and Ephesus, the city clerk tells the crowd, "There are perconsuls in
49:18
the plural.
49:19
Now, perconsul was a Roman authority to whom you might take a complaint, and normally
49:22
there would only be one per consul, but just at that particular time, per New Age Tacitus
49:27
tells those, there was actually two perconsuls, because of the preversper consul Salinas by
49:33
poisoning.
49:34
He was murdered by poisoning in the fall of 8054.
49:38
And another example is in Acts 23, where Paul is apprehended for the Jewish council,
49:43
and he's the high priest, and orders for him to be struck in the mouth, and Paul says,
49:51
"God is going to strike you, you white wash wall, for according to law, you ordered me
49:56
to be stood here, but then contrary to law, you ordered me to be struck."
50:00
And the people say, "Would you revile cause high priest?"
50:04
And Paul says, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize he was the high priest."
50:07
Or it's written, "You should also be evil, ruler of your people."
50:09
Now, how come Paul doesn't know the high priest is at the time?
50:12
Well, he reads a symphus, and he tells us that, actually, and I have the quotes on my
50:16
website, and I was interested, that Anani is, so if him that was spoken, was inter with
50:20
not the high priest.
50:21
But he'd been sitting in judgment in that shame and capacity, so he previously held
50:24
the office.
50:25
He'd been deposed.
50:26
The guy who replaced him, called Jonathan, had been murdered.
50:29
Another had not even appointed the station, and during that vacancy of his own authority,
50:33
he assumed upon himself that he was charged with the office, and then that illuminates
50:36
Paul's words.
50:37
I'm sorry, I didn't realize he was the high priest, right?
50:38
It's a jab at Ananias, and so when you read these extra biblical sources, it helps to
50:42
illuminate and clarify and corroborate, incidentally, the biblical narratives.
50:47
And I think that's a much more powerful way of arguing for the reliability of the biblical
50:53
accounts than to use the more direct testimony, such as the testimony in Flavianum in Volumetian
51:01
Josephus, because Josephus, as many of your viewers probably know, he mentions Jesus in
51:06
a very short paragraph, as soon as the testimony in Flavianum.
51:10
I never use that text in my apologetics, and there's one good reason for that, and
51:16
that Josephus is dependent upon Christians.
51:18
So all it tells us is that there are Christians in the first century who believe certain things
51:22
about Jesus, which we already know from the New Testament, and the text is also suspect
51:27
in terms of how much of it's interpolated.
51:29
I tend to think that it's quite plausible that the whole text may be interpolated, especially
51:34
in view of the fact that Oregon, who quotes Josephus quite a bit in his dialogue with
51:40
is against Celsus, he doesn't allude to that text at all in the second century.
51:46
So I don't use that text at all, but I think the indirect, more casual, incidental illusions
51:53
are much more powerful as an argument for a gospel reliability.
51:56
Absolutely, and I'm glad there are people out there like you that have found these or
52:00
kind of coalesced all these things from other readings, because that's helpful for someone
52:03
like me or anyone listening to this to be able to understand that there are other ways
52:07
to corroborate what we're seeing, not just what we're reading here in English.
52:10
Now I just got to tell you, Jonathan, I was planning on doing some role-playing with you.
52:14
Like I was going to pretend to be like some sort of crazy atheist, but I think we're going
52:17
to run out of time because I had all kinds of crazy singers I was going to throw at you,
52:21
but we'll keep it a little bit more academic.
52:22
There are a couple of very difficult subjects that I know have come up with you with apologetics,
52:28
but these are things that come up when I'm having conversations with people trying to
52:31
bring them towards faith or show them the light or anything like that.
52:33
I rephrase it, that are really big-time hang-ups for them.
52:36
So I would love to get your perspective on just a couple of these and then we'll move
52:39
towards the end of the podcast here.
52:41
And the first thing is probably the one that's the most common and that's the problem of
52:44
evil or the problem of pain, essentially that if there is a God, he's so uninvolved that
52:50
he's evil, because all this injustice is going on all over the world, or he just doesn't
52:54
exist at all.
52:55
And so how have you dealt with that in the past and would have been some of the best ways
52:59
that you've found to maybe turn people to the other side of the argument when we're talking
53:03
about the problem of pain, the problem of evil?
53:05
Yeah.
53:06
So first of all, I think that the problem of evil is evidence against theism.
53:09
I think that it's evidence on the atheist side.
53:12
And one thing I try to encourage people to do is to be candid about when there was evidence
53:19
in favor of your view and evidence that goes against it.
53:22
Because I think that for any complex topic, whether that's evolution or Christianity or
53:28
existence of God, or whatever, climate change, whatever, it's almost never the case that
53:38
all the evidence is lopsided.
53:39
The only evidence supports one view and there's no evidence on the other side, otherwise why
53:43
would academics disagree on topics, right?
53:46
So I think that the problem of evil is some evidence against theism.
53:51
Now, why am I still a theist?
53:53
Well, I think the evidence for theism is stronger than the evidence against it.
53:56
The way I would define evidence is that something is evidence of raising the probability for
54:00
proposition being true.
54:04
And evidence is defined as a likelihood ratio, as a Bayesian, I would define evidence as
54:09
a likelihood ratio.
54:11
And the probability of the evidence existing given the hypothesis being correct against
54:15
the probability of that same evidence existing given the hypothesis is incorrect.
54:19
And there's a few things though that I would note about the problem of evil.
54:23
One is that it's very easy for people to become so fixated on arguments against theism,
54:32
that they missed the force for the trees and missed the avalanche of confirmatory evidence
54:37
for theism and for Christianity more particularly.
54:41
Furthermore, it's very easy to over estimate the potency of the problem of evil.
54:50
And one reason for that is because the people who like to use the wrong people as an argument
54:58
against theism are generally very impressed with the sheer number of instances in the
55:03
world of suffering and evil.
55:05
But these are not epistemically independent.
55:08
So to explain this, imagine, let's say hypothetically, we discover the first instance of evil in
55:14
the world.
55:15
Let's call it evidence one.
55:17
Let's say that it has taking an arbitrary figure.
55:21
Let's just say that it has a base factor of 100 meaning that it's 100 times more likely
55:25
if atheism is true than a theism is true.
55:28
It doesn't follow though that the second piece of evidence carries the same evidential weight.
55:34
Because if God has a morally sufficient justification for permitting instance one, you might well
55:39
have a similar morally sufficient reason for preventing instance two and instance three
55:42
and instance four and so forth.
55:44
So there is the problem of diminishing returns for multiplying examples where after a certain
55:51
level, adding more examples doesn't really add more weight to the case because if God
55:58
has a moral suspicion reason for the other ones, then he may well have a similar one
56:02
for the next one and so forth.
56:04
Whereas by contrast with the case for theism and the case for Christianity more particularly,
56:08
we not only have extensive evidence, but it's also varied in kind meaning that we have lots
56:14
of different, a multidisciplinary case based on not just lots of examples of the same thing,
56:20
but varied, varied kinds of evidence.
56:24
So that's I think something I would, I would say there are also finally, there's the problem
56:29
of what my colleague Timothy McGrew, the philosopher calls the problem of evidential entanglement,
56:34
which is that let's say the problem of evil is quite surprising on theism, a quite improbable
56:40
on theism.
56:41
It's also quite improbable on atheism because the problem of evil presupposes that you have
56:47
sentient conscious experience.
56:48
You can't experience suffering if you're not conscious, right, you can't exercise evil
56:52
if you're not conscious.
56:55
So but consciousness, many of the preconditions for consciousness arising in the universe
57:02
are points of leverage that have traditionally been used in support of theism.
57:07
And so actually consciousness arising in the universe is very surprising on atheism.
57:15
And so evil existing in the world is quite surprising on theism or atheism, which are
57:22
two mutually exhaustive propositions.
57:24
So that also I think reduces the evidential force of the problem of evil.
57:28
I think that that's important for people to kind of distinguish because that is, there
57:32
are so many ways to answer that question, but I feel like most people just answer it poorly.
57:35
And then people can kind of walk away with their same presuppositions.
57:38
The other thing that I get aside from the problem of evil is who created God?
57:43
I guess that's the easiest way to say it.
57:44
I know you've talked about that before, but it's basically if God created everything,
57:48
then who or what created him?
57:49
And I got to be honest, I was driving around the other day and I was like, I wouldn't
57:53
know how to answer that question.
57:54
If somebody were to say that, and I can't say, Oh, you just got to have faith or something
57:57
dumb like that.
57:58
But if someone says, you know, Hey, who created God?
58:00
You know, created the entire universe where like, how did he become to be in the first
58:05
place?
58:06
Yeah.
58:07
So there's a few problems there.
58:08
I'd say that's one of the weaker objections to theism.
58:12
For one thing, so every worldview must ultimately come back to an unmoved mover, something which
58:17
exists necessarily.
58:18
It didn't begin to exist.
58:20
It's not contingent for its existence on something else.
58:23
And in the 20th century, when the steady state theory was the prominent cosmology, which
58:31
maintained the universe was eternal in existence, it was a lot easier to believe that perhaps
58:35
the universe is that uncaused first cause that it just exists a fruit necessity, it didn't
58:41
begin to exist.
58:42
It's not dependent for existence of anything else.
58:44
Now with what we discovered in the 20th century, thanks to Albert Einstein and Edwin Hubble
58:53
and others, we now know that the universe actually began to exist about 13.8 billion
59:03
years ago at a point called the Big Bang.
59:05
And that being the case, matter is rather a crummy candidate for that rule of unmoved
59:12
mover or uncaused first cause.
59:15
And so it points, I think, quite forcefully to a matter of being contingent.
59:21
And therefore, you have to ground the explanation of matter in something else.
59:25
Now everything which exists, either exists because of something else brought into existence,
59:32
or it exists because of the necessity of its own nature.
59:36
So abstract objects like numbers, for example, they weren't caused to exist by something
59:40
else, but they exist as a necessity of their own nature, at least a lot of mathematicians
59:44
take that view.
59:46
And ultimately, everything must come back to something like that.
59:49
So I personally think that theism is the best candidate, especially in view of the fact
59:55
that so God has viewed as a necessary being, he's eternal.
59:59
And the only way for an eternal being, or an eternal set of necessary, so if you have
1:00:04
an eternal set of necessary and sufficient conditions, the effect necessarily is there.
1:00:09
So if you have a pool of water that's been in a zero degree centigrade for all of eternity,
1:00:16
well it's going to be frozen for all of eternity as well, because the necessary and sufficient
1:00:21
set of conditions are present already.
1:00:24
So if we're having an eternal cause exerting a temporal effect, some philosophers have argued
1:00:30
that the best way to make sense of that is to posit a conscious being that can freely
1:00:34
choose or freely will the universe into existence at time zero.
1:00:41
So God is defined as a necessary being and a necessary being doesn't need a cause external
1:00:47
to itself to explain this existence.
1:00:49
And finally, I'd also add that not having an explanation, so causing an explanation as
1:00:53
the best explanation for a given phenomenon does not require you to have an explanation
1:00:57
of that explanation.
1:00:58
Otherwise you would result in an infinite chain of explanations or an infinite regress
1:01:02
and you would never explain anything.
1:01:03
Absolutely.
1:01:04
Hey, well I appreciate you going into all that detail.
1:01:06
You've given a lot of great detail on all these different subjects.
1:01:08
But now we're going to get down to something I'd like to do at the end of my interviews
1:01:11
that's called, what would you say to someone that said?
1:01:14
And so I'm going to say that, what would you say to someone that said, and then I'm going
1:01:16
to fill in the blanks.
1:01:17
But here's the thing, this is lightning round.
1:01:20
You have 30 seconds maximum to answer the question.
1:01:23
So we can't go off into a whole lot of detail.
1:01:25
It is just straight up meat, potatoes, I'm going to be putting you in a box, Jonathan.
1:01:28
So you up for it?
1:01:29
All right.
1:01:30
Here we go.
1:01:31
Here's the first one.
1:01:32
What would you say to someone that said, Jesus of Nazareth never existed?
1:01:37
He did, and there's overwhelming evidence from the Gospels.
1:01:43
Paul, Paul, we know one author, a new Jesus brother, namely the apostle Paul, a new Jesus
1:01:47
brother, James, as well as Jesus of course, disciple Peter.
1:01:50
I have a whole article where I addressed Richard Currier in detail, his book on this
1:01:55
wrist.
1:01:56
So you have Jesus, why am I reason to doubt?
1:01:57
I think it's a train wreck.
1:01:58
If you want to know why, and some of my interaction with his analysis of the Pauling Corpus, then
1:02:02
check out the article.
1:02:03
Okay.
1:02:04
Sounds good.
1:02:05
What would you say to someone that said?
1:02:06
Do you think Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, whatever, all roads lead to God?
1:02:12
I would say that that doesn't make any sense because Christianity makes unique truth claims,
1:02:19
namely that Jesus says in Jordan 14, 6, "I am the wether truth and life no one comes to
1:02:22
the Father except by through a maniac, for verse 12 says that salvation is found no one
1:02:25
else, for there's no other name given among men under heaven, but which you might be saved."
1:02:29
And so, so in Christianity, of course, Qur'an predicts Islam, Islam 0, 4, verse 1, 5, 7 says
1:02:36
that Jesus was never crucified.
1:02:38
So well, which is it?
1:02:39
Well, only one of those could be true.
1:02:41
Right.
1:02:42
You're crushing it.
1:02:43
You're doing a great job so far.
1:02:44
Let's keep going.
1:02:45
What would you say to someone that said, "Christian apologetics is not intellectually accessible
1:02:48
for most people?"
1:02:50
I'd say it depends on the level of apologetics.
1:02:54
So not, so there are different levels of apologetics.
1:02:57
I tend to be more of an academic apologist, so I'm not, I don't pitch my work to beginners.
1:03:03
I'm, I'm for my work, I think, is for people that want to go to the next level in apologetics,
1:03:08
but there are popular level apologists who are worth reading as well.
1:03:11
So I think it depends on what, which authors you're reading.
1:03:14
All right.
1:03:15
Good deal.
1:03:16
What would you say to someone that said?
1:03:17
I guess I believe in God, but this whole Jesus thing is kind of weird.
1:03:21
I'd say to study the New Testament, in particular, the evidence for it, both internal and external
1:03:26
the support that Jesus was a real person, that the gospels are substantially trustworthy
1:03:30
and historically reported of his life and deeds, and, and that he really in fact rose
1:03:35
from the dead and vindicated thereby his radical, Messianic and divine self-claims.
1:03:41
Okay.
1:03:42
What would you say to someone that said, "We simply cannot trust the biblical scriptures
1:03:45
because we have no way of knowing that they've been translated accurately?"
1:03:49
Well, we can check the translation for ourselves, so that's easy, right?
1:03:53
If you, you can learn Greek in Hebrew, you can go to Sanmanary or university.
1:03:57
And also we, even if you don't know Greek or Hebrew, we have Bible software like the
1:04:00
Logos Bible software, for example, which gives you tools that you can use to actually get
1:04:04
down to the original language and find out how the word, you can search how word is used
1:04:08
by Aristotle or their literature expatitors or to see if it's, and so forth, to find out
1:04:12
what the word actually means.
1:04:14
Absolutely.
1:04:15
We only have a few left here.
1:04:16
What would you say to someone that said, "The Christians have their crusades, Muslims
1:04:19
have jihad.
1:04:21
They're essentially the same thing."
1:04:24
I'd say that that commits fallacy of argument and inconsequentialism, which is to say that
1:04:29
because a belief has had certain consequences or has been used in a certain way, or it could
1:04:35
even be an atonement in fallacy against the men, therefore it's false, and that simply
1:04:41
doesn't follow.
1:04:42
Okay.
1:04:43
What would you say to someone that said, "I hate God"?
1:04:48
I would say, "Okay.
1:04:52
Why do you hate God?"
1:04:53
Yeah, that kind of goes outside the world of academics, and there's probably a whole
1:04:57
lot more to go there.
1:04:58
This is my last question for the day here.
1:04:59
What would you say to someone that said, "Science and Christianity will never mix"?
1:05:06
What brought you to that conclusion?
1:05:07
Well, I'm going to make you go a little bit further on that last one.
1:05:10
But for those people, again, just kind of drive that last point home that they think
1:05:14
oil and water, Christianity, and science, what would you say to them?
1:05:18
I would say that there's overwhelming evidence, I think, from the natural sciences for theism.
1:05:26
I could get into my take on the early chapters of Genesis, but that would take a while, so
1:05:30
I won't go there, but I'll direct people to my website where I discuss the early chapters
1:05:33
of Genesis in some detail.
1:05:35
We will get into that into the show notes, guys, and maybe we can do a round two where
1:05:38
we dig even further into all this detail, but I really, really appreciate you being as
1:05:41
thorough as you were, even though we were just scratching the surface on a lot of these things.
1:05:44
But that is all for me.
1:05:45
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:05:47
No, I think that's great.
1:05:49
It's been great being here.
1:05:50
Thanks for having me on, and great questions.
1:05:51
All right.
1:05:52
I'm Adam McClatchy, thank you for coming on Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
1:05:56
There you go, guys.
1:05:57
I hope you enjoyed my interview with Dr. Jonathan McClatchy.
1:05:59
I told you it was going to be a heady one, but there's a lot there for you guys to chew
1:06:02
on in the future, so make sure you do that.
1:06:03
Before we let you guys go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
1:06:06
Add Undaunted Life, our mission is equipping men to push back darkness, and we do that
1:06:09
by providing you content like this podcast that helps you forward spiritual, mental, and
1:06:13
physical resilience.
1:06:14
So here are all the links I've got for you.
1:06:15
I've got a link to his website, and guys, he's got a lot of different things on his website,
1:06:18
so he's got a lot of these articles that we discussed, but he's also got some different
1:06:22
formulas, and not formulas, not like a scientific formula, but he's got different resources
1:06:26
there for you.
1:06:27
There's the word resources that you can, if you're questioning your faith or if you're
1:06:30
having some questions or some doubts, he's able to help you with that.
1:06:32
All that comes through his website, but I've also got a link to his YouTube channel, his
1:06:35
Facebook page, and also specifically this one particular thing that he talked about in
1:06:39
the podcast.
1:06:40
I just use a link from cross-examined, but it's called extra biblical evidence for the
1:06:44
veracity of the gospel history, and so this is a long article.
1:06:47
It's almost like a little pamphlet in itself, but that is great, great information for you
1:06:50
guys.
1:06:51
Thank you so much for listening to this podcast.
1:06:52
We really do appreciate it.
1:06:53
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a review.
1:06:57
If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email
1:07:00
to info@undontadotlife, that's i-n-f-o @undontadotlife.
1:07:04
You can follow us on Instagram and TikTok and like us on Facebook, and you can check
1:07:07
out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this
1:07:10
coming your way.
1:07:11
Just go to www.undontadotlife, and we also want to thank the band, August Burns Red for
1:07:16
allowing us to use their music for our content.
1:07:18
We enter out to a track on this podcast as our song "Cutting the Ties," which is off
1:07:21
their 10th anniversary re-recording of their album Leveler.
1:07:25
The links are in the description.
1:07:26
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:07:29
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:07:36
Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
1:07:48
You are made yet, and the Father knows you are made right.