The Charlie Kirk Show - Defeating AI's Best Arguments Against God ft. Frank Turek

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here live from thebitcoin.com studio.

00:00:04.000 We have a phenomenal conversation with my friend Frank Turek about atheism, morality, and top objections that people have to giving their life to Jesus.

00:00:12.000 It's a very important conversation.

00:00:13.000 Text it to your friends and email me as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:16.000 That is freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:18.000 Buckle up everybody.

00:00:19.000 Here we go.

00:00:20.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:22.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:24.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:28.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:31.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:32.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:33.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:00:40.000 Turning point USA. 0.65

00:00:41.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:00:50.000 That's why we are here.

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00:01:18.000 Okay, everybody, super excited for this conversation with my friend Frank Turek.

00:01:23.000 Frank, great to see you, my friend.

00:01:24.000 It's great seeing you, my friend.

00:01:25.000 Frank is one of my mentors and friends and teachers, and we've been studying together here in Phoenix.

00:01:33.000 It's kind of our off season, right?

00:01:34.000 So it's a little different than an NFL player.

00:01:37.000 I have two off-seasons a year.

00:01:38.000 So my on season, it's similar to you.

00:01:40.000 You're on season, what?

00:01:41.000 It's fall and spring.

00:01:42.000 Yeah, well, I'm doing colleges too.

00:01:44.000 Just not as many as you, man.

00:01:45.000 You're killing it.

00:01:46.000 How many of you do?

00:01:47.000 We try and do anywhere between 15 and 20 a year.

00:01:51.000 You're doing 25 a semester.

00:01:52.000 Yeah, we do about 50 to 60 years.

00:01:54.000 It's crazy.

00:01:54.000 Yeah, the pace is out of control.

00:01:56.000 But it's great.

00:01:57.000 And so just remind your audience, you do cross-examined.

00:01:59.000 You have the best books out on Christian apologetics.

00:02:03.000 That's what my mom says.

00:02:04.000 Yes.

00:02:04.000 Yeah.

00:02:04.000 Well, she's right.

00:02:05.000 That's right.

00:02:05.000 I don't have enough faith to be an atheist is the big one.

00:02:08.000 Stealing from God, why atheists need God to make their case. 0.98

00:02:10.000 Those are the two biggies on apologetics.

00:02:13.000 And so you go to college campuses and you do similar type vibe that I do, open question, open mic, and your stuff has gone very viral throughout the years.

00:02:24.000 Before we dive into just some of the fun, because I'm going to have you debate our AI in a second.

00:02:27.000 Let's do it, man.

00:02:28.000 But before we do that, what are some of the changes today, 2025, versus what you've heard from students five years ago and 10 years ago?

00:02:35.000 Well, let's go back 15 years ago in the heyday of the new atheists. 0.62

00:02:40.000 We got so many questions from atheists and we got so much pushback from atheists.

00:02:44.000 But I'm going to schools now, Charlie, and the organizers are saying, hey, when you come and talk about the evidence for Christianity, could you spend more time on the New Testament than whether or not God exists?

00:02:55.000 Because we're having trouble finding a lot of atheists on campus.

00:02:58.000 Okay, atheism is waning and the idea that there's at least some spiritual force out there is gaining strength and now Christianity is being looked at from all areas as you know because people are now you know you know what's driving people to consider Christianity evil there's too much evil in the world so things are things are getting worse and worse and people are going there's got to be more to life than this there's got to be some standard out there maybe I ought to look at Christianity again

00:03:28.000 and the work you're doing on college campuses is making people see Christianity as at least plausible.

00:03:36.000 This guy, Charlie Kirk, is really sharp, and he believes in Christianity?

00:03:41.000 Maybe I ought to look at Christianity again, because you're in the political world. 1.00

00:03:45.000 Yes, that's right, primarily.

00:03:46.000 Yeah, yeah, and so people are going, Charlie is one of the sharpest speakers I've seen, and he is an evangelical Christian?

00:03:54.000 Maybe he knows something I ought to look into.

00:03:56.000 I do hear that feedback a lot.

00:03:59.000 most promising thing that we receive freedom at charliekirk.com our emails or messaging on social media we probably get a thousand a year charlie I believe in God because of you I go back to church and that doesn't count the comments because the comments you don't know they could be trolls or whatever but we get thousands of comments Charlie I'd strengthen my faith in God and Jesus and life goes to you and that's awesome because that is a that's an ultimate purpose to what we do it's not the sole purpose I mean we believe that once we instruct people of the civil law then

00:04:29.000 that will Point people to Christ.

00:04:32.000 But no, it's a very exciting moment.

00:04:33.000 Would you say that I don't think atheism is dead?

00:04:36.000 My friend Eric Metaxas, I think, gets a little bit ahead of himself, but it seems to be dying.

00:04:41.000 Yeah, it's waning.

00:04:43.000 Yes.

00:04:43.000 And the difference between 15 years ago and now is people used to wonder if Christianity was true.

00:04:52.000 Now they're asking, is Christianity good?

00:04:54.000 So the top three objections on a college campus that I get, and I think you're getting too if you think about it, the top three objections to Christianity are morality, morality, and morality.

00:05:05.000 It's all about morality.

00:05:07.000 It's all about what does this mean to me?

00:05:08.000 They don't really get interested in like ancient text disputes very rarely, but they'll say, oh, why is slavery in the Bible?

00:05:16.000 Right.

00:05:17.000 How do you respond when someone says, but Frank, the Bible endorses slavery?

00:05:22.000 I would say, first of all, what do you mean by slavery?

00:05:24.000 Do you know what the kind of slavery the Old Testament was talking about?

00:05:27.000 Because it's not the kind of race-based chattel slavery we had here in America.

00:05:32.000 It actually is prohibited.

00:05:33.000 Yes.

00:05:34.000 Kidnapping for slavery was in both the Old and New Testaments.

00:05:38.000 It was punishable by death in the Old Testament, okay?

00:05:40.000 It was chattel slavery. 0.56

00:05:42.000 It was indentured servitude.

00:05:43.000 If you were in debt and you needed to get out of debt and you needed to pay for your family to feed your family, you could put yourself in an indentured servitude position to work for that person, to work off debt, and to provide for your family.

00:05:57.000 And if you were in that situation, it was temporary.

00:06:01.000 It could only go seven years unless by mutual agreement you wanted to become a bond servant and you could extend that.

00:06:08.000 It wasn't race-based.

00:06:09.000 You could get out of it by running away.

00:06:12.000 You could leave it.

00:06:14.000 This is in Deuteronomy 15, Deuteronomy 15, 14 to 16.

00:06:17.000 You're not to chase after your waste.

00:06:19.000 Yes, you could, so it's not like chattel slavery here.

00:06:22.000 It was not an ideal situation, but you know, there was no welfare state in ancient Israel.

00:06:30.000 There was no way to pay off debt other than put yourself in the employee of somebody else.

00:06:36.000 In fact, it's a version of Old Testament.

00:06:39.000 Old Testament slavery or indentured servitude was really a kind of bankruptcy law.

00:06:45.000 It allowed you to work off debt and take care of your family.

00:06:49.000 And so it wasn't the kind of slavery we had here.

00:06:52.000 It was indentured servitude.

00:06:53.000 And there's a lot of details on this.

00:06:55.000 My friend Paul Copan, who wrote a great book called, Is God a Moral Monster?

00:06:58.000 I know, it's on my list.

00:07:00.000 Paul goes into it in great detail.

00:07:02.000 And I think this is true about the questions we have to deal with, Charlie, on a college campus.

00:07:08.000 People say, what are the hardest questions to answer?

00:07:13.000 And I think the hardest questions to answer are none of them.

00:07:16.000 They're just hard to answer in two minutes.

00:07:18.000 It takes time to explain.

00:07:20.000 It takes time, a lot of time, a lot of context.

00:07:22.000 But we also must be unafraid to brag on how the teachings in the New Testament led to the abolition of slavery.

00:07:30.000 But also, I mean, in Philemon, like 1.16, Paul writes the Philemon, you know, you should view your slave as you, like as an equal, basically.

00:07:39.000 That's right.

00:07:40.000 If I'm remembering correctly.

00:07:41.000 Yes.

00:07:41.000 Philemon only has one chapter, so it's Philemon 16.

00:07:44.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:07:45.000 And so that's very important.

00:07:50.000 But also that slavery has been the norm for almost every civilization.

00:07:55.000 Yes.

00:07:56.000 It is what worldview has gotten rid of it, which is noteworthy.

00:08:01.000 Exactly.

00:08:01.000 And also, Jesus came to set the captives free.

00:08:04.000 That was his initial inauguration.

00:08:06.000 His inauguration into ministry is Luke chapter 4.

00:08:10.000 One of the things he says is, I came to set the captives free.

00:08:14.000 But people will say, well, why didn't the New Testament tell that culture to eradicate slavery completely right then and there?

00:08:23.000 Let me ask you a question about this, Charlie.

00:08:24.000 See if you agree with this.

00:08:27.000 Would it make any sense to tell people in California right now, particularly the minority of Christians, to eradicate abortion in California right now?

00:08:37.000 Would I tell them to?

00:08:38.000 Could they do it?

00:08:39.000 No.

00:08:39.000 They couldn't do it.

00:08:40.000 No.

00:08:40.000 Right?

00:08:41.000 What would be a way they could do it?

00:08:43.000 Incrementally.

00:08:44.000 They incrementally worked.

00:08:47.000 This is the least persuasive argument to a college kid.

00:08:51.000 Oh, it totally is.

00:08:51.000 Don't you agree?

00:08:52.000 Incrementalism?

00:08:53.000 They're like, how dare you?

00:08:54.000 Yeah.

00:08:54.000 Because they're 19 and they're zealots and they're self-righteous.

00:09:00.000 And so I would say that incrementalism, would you agree, is the least persuasive argument?

00:09:05.000 Oh, it's the least persuasive, but it makes sense because of the political realities at the time.

00:09:10.000 In fact, as you pointed out, it was universal.

00:09:14.000 Slavery was everywhere in the ancient world.

00:09:17.000 Now, by the time you got to the Roman period, it wasn't totally indentured servitude, but it wasn't completely chattel slavery either.

00:09:24.000 Because in the Roman period, it wasn't race-based and you could buy your way out of it. 0.90

00:09:29.000 Okay, so it wasn't like we had here, but it was still something that was not ideal, quite obviously.

00:09:36.000 And God, the way he got rid of it, was through incrementally, first of all, everyone's made in the image of God.

00:09:41.000 Everybody is one in Christ.

00:09:43.000 There are no social distinctions.

00:09:45.000 Do you know that Pliny the Younger, who was somebody that persecuted Christians, said he tortured two slave women who were deaconesses in the church?

00:09:57.000 How did slave women become deaconesses in the church because the church treated them as equals? 1.00

00:10:04.000 What do you say to the argument, and I'm paraphrasing, and I go look it up here, where Paul says slaves should submit to their masters?

00:10:11.000 Yes.

00:10:12.000 How do we work with them?

00:10:13.000 Because what Christians are supposed to do is treat everyone as if they're made in the image of God because they are. 0.98

00:10:20.000 It is our way of loving people, even those who don't treat us well.

00:10:25.000 We treat everybody like they're made in the image of God.

00:10:28.000 So if you're in a slave situation, and Paul says try to get out of it if you can, but if you're in a slave situation, he does say that.

00:10:34.000 Yes, you ought to do, you ought to do right by the person you're dealing with.

00:10:41.000 In fact, Peter says this: He says, What good is it if you treat people well who treat you well?

00:10:47.000 Even the pagans do that.

00:10:49.000 He said, But you should treat people who don't treat you well.

00:10:54.000 It's better to suffer evil than to do evil.

00:10:57.000 So they also say in slavery, and then this is a moral pomposity, you know, kind of, they say that if the Bible is perfect, like why didn't it explicitly say we got to get rid of this thing?

00:11:10.000 Well, it did, but in a way that wouldn't have crushed it at its initiation.

00:11:16.000 Because if the Christian church had all these commands for the people at the time to overthrow the Roman government, they would have completely crushed the Christian church.

00:11:26.000 So what they said was you can't kidnap anybody, that everybody, regardless of their social position, is an equal, that they get a Sabbath, they have rights.

00:11:39.000 If you hurt a slave, they go free.

00:11:42.000 If you kill a slave, you're going to be punished.

00:11:46.000 So the slaves weren't property, although when you read in the Old Testament, you'll hear them referred to as property.

00:11:52.000 What that meant was they were money.

00:11:55.000 It's equivalent today to say, well, let me ask you this.

00:11:58.000 Can the owner of the Golden State Warriors sell Steph Curry?

00:12:03.000 Yes.

00:12:04.000 Yes, he can, because he owns the basketball services of Steph Curry.

00:12:08.000 That's a good analogy.

00:12:09.000 Yeah.

00:12:09.000 But he can't sell Steph Curry as a person.

00:12:13.000 Steph Curry is under contract the services.

00:12:16.000 This is the language that was used in the Bible.

00:12:19.000 It wasn't the kind of language that chattel slavery used.

00:12:25.000 It was the kind of language that we might relate to a sports team, a sports owner.

00:12:31.000 You own the services of Steph Curry, but you don't own him as a person.

00:12:34.000 So on the slavery question, then they would also say, why are there so many laws that make it seem like it's okay?

00:12:44.000 That doesn't forbid it.

00:12:45.000 Because it's case law, just like we have in the United States, where it'll say in the Old Testament, if a man hits his slave and causes damage, then there'll be a penalty to the man.

00:13:00.000 But that case law isn't prescribing that you hit your slave.

00:13:05.000 It's describing what you should do if someone hits their slave.

00:13:10.000 Much like we have laws today.

00:13:12.000 If somebody breaks into a house and steals something, what should you do to them?

00:13:17.000 It's not prescribing breaking into houses and stealing.

00:13:21.000 It's telling you what to do when somebody does evil.

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00:14:18.000 That is why slavery comes up a lot. 0.80

00:14:24.000 The Canaanites.

00:14:25.000 Sure.

00:14:26.000 So how do you answer?

00:14:28.000 By the way, this is part of the work that we were going to do today, anyways.

00:14:30.000 This is great.

00:14:31.000 How do you answer when someone says, but the Bible, and I believe I have an answer to this, but you're much crisper than I am.

00:14:39.000 The Bible told the people of Israel at the time to wipe out, to kill women, maybe, right? 0.97

00:14:46.000 Sure.

00:14:46.000 Yeah, women, children, children, the animals, the whole devil.

00:14:49.000 What kind of a God would tell a people to, I don't want to say genocide, but to wipe out an enemy?

00:14:57.000 Okay, first thing I'm going to ask people who bring up any moral objection is: by what moral standard are you using to say this is wrong?

00:15:02.000 Right.

00:15:03.000 Because if they're atheists, they don't have an objective moral standard.

00:15:05.000 But it's a fair question to ask of a Christian. 1.00

00:15:07.000 You're saying your God is good and he does these words.

00:15:09.000 So they would say, they would say, my view, I don't know what I believe, but I want to know how you could be consistent.

00:15:16.000 Sure.

00:15:17.000 Which would actually be a fair question.

00:15:18.000 It's a totally fair question, and it's a good question.

00:15:20.000 It's something that good should give us pause.

00:15:23.000 And I think that skeptics of the Bible bring this up rightfully so. 1.00

00:15:28.000 You should be able to deal with this issue.

00:15:30.000 Okay.

00:15:31.000 There are two views on this, two major views on it.

00:15:34.000 One is these were literal commands to wipe everybody out.

00:15:38.000 The second view is that these were hyperbolic commands.

00:15:40.000 This is the way the ancient Near East people spoke.

00:15:44.000 For example, if you go to Egypt, where we just were about six months ago, there's something called the Merneptah Stella.

00:15:50.000 Pharaoh Merneptah on this stela, this standing stone with all sorts of inscriptions, says, Israel has been laid waste.

00:15:58.000 Its seed is no more.

00:16:00.000 In other words, it's basically saying, I, Pharaoh Merneptah, wiped out Israel off the face of the earth. 0.92

00:16:07.000 Really?

00:16:07.000 How come they're still there?

00:16:09.000 It's exaggerated language, much like we would say in sports, we obliterated, we annihilated, we killed the bears, as we always do, right?

00:16:19.000 Okay.

00:16:19.000 Or that as a Gen Z would say, like, I'm dead.

00:16:21.000 That's right.

00:16:22.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:16:22.000 And why do we think this is the case?

00:16:24.000 Not only are there parallels in other ancient Near East documents, if you go to, say, Deuteronomy 7, it'll say this: wipe everybody out.

00:16:32.000 Next verse says, and then don't intermarry with them.

00:16:35.000 And you're going, wait a minute, how could you intermarry with a group of people you had just wiped out?

00:16:39.000 And then, by the way, a couple chapters later, we see these people still around because it's hyperbolic language.

00:16:46.000 And why is this being used?

00:16:48.000 Why is this being done to begin with?

00:16:50.000 This is judgment.

00:16:51.000 These were people who were sacrificing their children to Molech. 0.98

00:16:55.000 They would melt, or they would heat up this molten hot God who would sear the baby on the arms of this molten hot God. 0.94

00:17:05.000 In fact, Plutarch, who's not even a biblical writer, he was a Greek writer in the first century, says that the village drummers would beat their drums louder to drown out the cries of the kids so the parents couldn't hear their own kids being sacrificed.

00:17:19.000 Charlie, on every college campus I go to, on every college campus you go to, there's going to be some kid who's going to say, why doesn't God stop all the evil in the world?

00:17:28.000 Well, here's a situation where God does stop the evil by judging these people and the atheists are complaining about it. 0.93

00:17:35.000 Like, wait a minute.

00:17:37.000 Do you want God to step in or not?

00:17:39.000 Here he is stepping in.

00:17:41.000 He is crushing these people because of the evil they've done and people are upset about it.

00:17:48.000 And they would say, yes, but not the kids and the woman, right? 0.78

00:17:51.000 Right.

00:17:51.000 If it's a literal command that he did, they did crush everybody.

00:17:55.000 There's no evidence it's literal.

00:17:58.000 It seems hyperbolic.

00:17:59.000 But if it is Literal, then the question is, does God have the right to take people into the next life whenever he wants?

00:18:08.000 Of course.

00:18:09.000 Yes.

00:18:09.000 If Christianity is true, people don't die.

00:18:11.000 They just change location.

00:18:13.000 They go from this life to the next life, and it's up to God when that happens.

00:18:18.000 And this, if it is true that everyone was killed, this is what happened.

00:18:22.000 The more, I think, proper interpretation when you look at all the data is these were exaggerated commands to push people out of the land so the promised people could get into the promised land to bring forth the promised Messiah to save the whole world.

00:18:37.000 Remember, God's working with free creatures.

00:18:39.000 He's not going to overpower their free will.

00:18:41.000 He's going to warn them for 400 years.

00:18:43.000 If they don't repent, he's going to judge them so the promised people can get into the land and bring forth Jesus ultimately that's going to bless the whole world.

00:18:52.000 So there's a lot more on Copan's book on this.

00:18:54.000 I have a little bit more on my book, Stealing from God, on the killing of the Canaanite, so-called killing of the Canaanites.

00:19:00.000 But it's judgment.

00:19:01.000 And Charlie, we don't like judgment in our country, right?

00:19:05.000 We want God to be, as C.S. Lewis put it, a benevolent old man who just wanted to look down and see that everybody was having a good time.

00:19:14.000 We want to be nicer than God.

00:19:15.000 Right, right.

00:19:16.000 But God is the God of judges.

00:19:17.000 He's infinitely just and he's infinitely loving.

00:19:19.000 Which is funny because the campus group is very big on justice.

00:19:22.000 That's their biggest thing.

00:19:22.000 I know.

00:19:23.000 But not really.

00:19:24.000 They say they are.

00:19:26.000 That's why I always ask them: look, there's two things you can have in the afterlife.

00:19:29.000 You can have either justice or grace.

00:19:31.000 Does anybody here want justice in the afterlife?

00:19:34.000 I don't want justice.

00:19:35.000 I want grace.

00:19:36.000 If I get justice, Charlie, I'm toast.

00:19:39.000 An infinitely just being is going to judge me?

00:19:43.000 I haven't been infinitely just, so I deserve justice.

00:19:47.000 What do you have to say?

00:19:48.000 And this is an AI-generated one, but I hear this all the time.

00:19:51.000 This helps me kind of remember about the Bible, and I think I know your answer to this.

00:19:56.000 And I've read a couple books about this, but that all that the story of the Old Testament closely resembles Canaanite and Mesopotamian deities, that the Old Testament has like a lot of similarities, such as the story of Moses or the creation story or a flood story.

00:20:14.000 Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

00:20:15.000 Well, every ancient culture has a flood story.

00:20:19.000 Sure.

00:20:19.000 Now, what do you think the reason for that is?

00:20:20.000 Because there was a flood story.

00:20:22.000 It's a flood, right?

00:20:23.000 Everybody had some sort of story related to it.

00:20:26.000 But if you look at the story of Moses, for example, you don't find parallels that are that all that close.

00:20:34.000 And if you do, it doesn't necessarily mean that Moses copied.

00:20:38.000 What's unique about the Israelites is that they are told to be separate from their neighbors.

00:20:45.000 That's one reason they're pushing out the Canaanites, wholly separate, right? 1.00

00:20:48.000 Same word.

00:20:49.000 The last thing they want to do is borrow from the people that they're trying to separate from.

00:20:54.000 In fact, what happens to them is when they do get too intermingled with the Canaanites, God judges them and continues to say, you're playing the harlot. 0.72

00:21:05.000 You're going with Baal. 0.85

00:21:07.000 You're going with all these other deities, and you should be worshiping me.

00:21:11.000 So he judges them.

00:21:13.000 And so, without getting into too much detail, though, is there any credence to this idea that the Bible was copied regionally between other River Valley civilization mythologies?

00:21:26.000 I have not necessarily heard that objection, but I can tell you from a...

00:21:32.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:21:33.000 Well, here's the problem.

00:21:34.000 If you look at the archaeologies, let's just look at the archaeology.

00:21:37.000 Let's go back to Joshua and Jericho.

00:21:41.000 The evidence from Jericho shows that oddly, the walls fell down and out.

00:21:46.000 There's no other city that has ever been discovered where the walls have fallen straight down and out.

00:21:52.000 When you take over a city, you go inward, you crush the wall, you knock it down, and the walls go inward.

00:22:00.000 Here, we find in the dirt there in Jericho that the walls fell out, just like the Bible says.

00:22:08.000 Yeah, there's a lot of that.

00:22:09.000 And there are, when we just did a 22, one-hour lesson series on the top archaeological discoveries of the Bible, Charlie, we discovered over 107, I think it was 107 people in the Bible that have been found in the dirt.

00:22:26.000 And about 75 of them were from the Old Testament.

00:22:30.000 And many of the events of the Old Testament have corroborative data in the dirt.

00:22:36.000 How would somebody writing the Old Testament, say a thousand years after Joshua, 1406 BC, know that the walls fell down and out?

00:22:46.000 How would he know that?

00:22:47.000 He wouldn't.

00:22:48.000 In fact, you know how many places are named in the book of Joshua?

00:22:52.000 What is it, 24 chapters in the book of Joshua?

00:22:55.000 There's over 350 named places in the book of Joshua, just in the book of Joshua.

00:23:02.000 It works out to something like 13 places a chapter.

00:23:07.000 More than that, even.

00:23:08.000 I can't remember the exact number, but it's crazy how many place locations, and many of these place locations have been discovered.

00:23:15.000 This is not an invented storyline that was put into writing a thousand years later.

00:23:22.000 Moses and editors later, there are editors that came after Moses, like they put his death in Deuteronomy.

00:23:28.000 They wrote this down at the time.

00:23:31.000 So here's a question of morality.

00:23:33.000 It's the problem of divine command theory.

00:23:35.000 I've heard this question only once.

00:23:37.000 Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?

00:23:42.000 Euthyphro dilemma from one of Plato's writings.

00:23:46.000 Socrates says this, and it's supposed to put the believer in God in a dilemma.

00:23:51.000 If you're going to say God is the source of morality, does he look up at a standard beyond him and say, oh, that's good.

00:23:56.000 I'll do that.

00:23:57.000 If so, why do you need God?

00:23:59.000 We can do that, right?

00:24:00.000 Yeah, I don't think it's much of a dilemma, though.

00:24:01.000 Maybe I'm over.

00:24:02.000 I think the answer to both is yes.

00:24:04.000 You are correct.

00:24:06.000 Here's why it's not a dilemma.

00:24:07.000 Why is it not a dilemma?

00:24:08.000 Because God himself is essence is good.

00:24:10.000 That's it.

00:24:10.000 Am I right?

00:24:11.000 Yeah, he's the standard.

00:24:12.000 He doesn't have to look up.

00:24:13.000 Exactly.

00:24:13.000 He's not arbitrary.

00:24:14.000 He is the standard.

00:24:16.000 So it's easily answered, and yet atheists online still think this is a good one.

00:24:20.000 What am I missing about that, though?

00:24:22.000 You're not missing anything.

00:24:23.000 It's a false dilemma.

00:24:24.000 A true dilemma is A or non-A.

00:24:27.000 A false dilemma is A or B. Maybe there's a C. Maybe there's a third option.

00:24:33.000 And in this case, there is.

00:24:35.000 God is the standard.

00:24:36.000 His nature is the moral standard.

00:24:38.000 The buck has to stop somewhere.

00:24:40.000 It stops with God's nature.

00:24:41.000 So I ask AI, this kind of goes to show how good of a teacher you are, like the best intellectually rigorous questions.

00:24:46.000 And I can answer most of these, honestly.

00:24:49.000 And I don't do this professionally.

00:24:50.000 I mean, I do somewhat of this, but you're like a super professional on this.

00:24:54.000 And so.

00:24:56.000 That's what my mom says.

00:24:57.000 I'll read this one.

00:24:59.000 This is from AI.

00:25:00.000 If God desires all people to be saved and know the truth, why does he remain hidden or silent to sincere seekers who never experience divine revelation or compelling reason to believe?

00:25:12.000 Everybody experiences divine revelation because God has written two books.

00:25:15.000 Yes, he's written through men what we call the scriptures, the Bible, but he's also written the book of nature.

00:25:21.000 In other words, we could say God has the book of his words and the book of his works.

00:25:27.000 And everybody has the book of his works.

00:25:30.000 Everybody knows there's a creator God who's moral because of the creation and the moral law written on the heart.

00:25:39.000 And the way we know God is we know God by his effects.

00:25:43.000 So if there's a creation, that's the effect.

00:25:45.000 We reason back to a cause, a creator.

00:25:48.000 If there's design in the universe, that's the effect.

00:25:51.000 We reason back to a cause, a designer.

00:25:53.000 If there's a moral law written on the heart, that's the effect.

00:25:55.000 We reason back to a cause, a moral lawgiver.

00:25:58.000 So there's nobody in the world who doesn't know that there's a creator God who's moral.

00:26:03.000 And we haven't lived up to that standard.

00:26:05.000 There are people who've never heard of the solution to our moral problem.

00:26:09.000 That's Jesus.

00:26:10.000 But everybody knows that there is a creator, moral God.

00:26:13.000 And the Bible indicates that if you seek, take a step toward that, the works that he's provided, he will get you the word so you can be saved.

00:26:22.000 This is the other one.

00:26:22.000 We spend a lot of time on this, but let me just repeat it, and I want you to answer it as you would a student.

00:26:27.000 How can we trust scripture as morally authoritative when it regulates slavery, commands genocidal warfare like 1 Samuel 15, and enforces harsh penalties for non-crimes by modern standards without undermining the concept of God's moral perfection?

00:26:42.000 I would ask the person, again, by what moral standard are you saying?

00:26:45.000 You're appealing to a Christian standard.

00:26:46.000 Yeah, you are.

00:26:47.000 Secondly, we've already dealt with those before on this program that slavery was not the kind of slavery.

00:26:56.000 It was a kind of bankruptcy law.

00:26:57.000 Right.

00:26:57.000 It was a kind of bankruptcy law.

00:26:59.000 The genocidal warfare.

00:27:00.000 It wasn't genocide.

00:27:01.000 It was sinocide.

00:27:03.000 Now, why do I say that?

00:27:04.000 Because God wiped out the Israelites for doing the same kind of things. 0.98

00:27:08.000 In other words, it wasn't ethnicity God was worried about.

00:27:12.000 It was the ethics.

00:27:14.000 Like after the golden calf, after the He wipes them out, right? 0.94

00:27:18.000 How many times does God judge Israel for the evil they've done?

00:27:21.000 Repeatedly.

00:27:22.000 A lot.

00:27:23.000 And our mutual friend Dennis Prager puts it this way.

00:27:25.000 He said, one of the reasons I know the Old Testament It's the least flattering telling of an ancient people.

00:27:33.000 Yeah, yeah, that's it.

00:27:33.000 You know it.

00:27:34.000 Yeah.

00:27:34.000 They would never invent such an embarrassing history of themselves.

00:27:37.000 They keep getting dope slapped by their own God.

00:27:40.000 And Charlie, you don't see this.

00:27:42.000 Like, if you go to, if you go to Egypt, all of the monuments in Egypt are propaganda monuments to how good the Pharaoh is.

00:27:51.000 They don't include any negative behavior.

00:27:54.000 But when you read the Old Testament, this is the history of the Jews.

00:27:58.000 They get the gold medal in sin every time.

00:28:03.000 Ingredients.

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00:29:04.000 Here's one that I think is important.

00:29:06.000 Again, this one is, I can answer this one.

00:29:09.000 Answer it.

00:29:10.000 Thanks to you.

00:29:11.000 Given the discrepancies between gospel resurrection accounts and the lack of external corroboration, how do you defend the resurrection as a historical event without begging the question?

00:29:19.000 Well, first of all, the discrepancies are a feature, not a bug.

00:29:23.000 The fact that there are discrepancies means that it's probably true.

00:29:26.000 Because if you were trying to lie, every single account would be exactly the same, right?

00:29:29.000 Exactly.

00:29:31.000 We know this whenever there's, you know, car accident or something in the card here.

00:29:35.000 Or even like, you know, something happens here and there's a little controversy at the turning point campus or an event.

00:29:40.000 I bring three people in and I get a generalized telling, but I realize like, oh, okay, got it.

00:29:48.000 What mile power do you think they were going?

00:29:50.000 What was this?

00:29:50.000 What was the color of the car?

00:29:51.000 But, you know, eventually you get towards that.

00:29:53.000 So I think it's a feature, not a bug.

00:29:55.000 And then there are a lot of external corroboration.

00:29:57.000 I mean, there's Josephus, right?

00:30:00.000 Yes.

00:30:01.000 There's other Roman historians.

00:30:02.000 Also, the Talmud talks about Jesus, not the resurrection, but they said that people believed in the resurrection.

00:30:07.000 Exactly.

00:30:08.000 Correct?

00:30:08.000 I mean, that.

00:30:09.000 Yeah.

00:30:10.000 So how did I do?

00:30:11.000 You did excellently.

00:30:12.000 Okay.

00:30:13.000 Yeah.

00:30:13.000 What else am I missing?

00:30:14.000 Beautiful.

00:30:14.000 Well, let me give another example for our listeners and viewers.

00:30:17.000 It might be this.

00:30:18.000 Do you realize that the eyewitnesses of the Titanic, the survivors, disagreed on how the Titanic sank?

00:30:24.000 Well, I imagine, because we actually didn't know how the Titanic sank for quite some time.

00:30:28.000 Right.

00:30:29.000 Because it happened largely below the surface.

00:30:31.000 That's right.

00:30:32.000 And some said it went downhole.

00:30:34.000 Oh, I'm sorry.

00:30:34.000 I thought you meant okay.

00:30:35.000 No, no.

00:30:36.000 This is a good illustration of what you're saying.

00:30:38.000 Some said it went downhole.

00:30:39.000 Others said it broke in two when it went down.

00:30:42.000 What should we conclude from that, Charlie?

00:30:45.000 Well, we should conclude that it did go down.

00:30:48.000 That's it.

00:30:49.000 That's right.

00:30:50.000 And that the water was cold.

00:30:52.000 That's right.

00:30:52.000 No.

00:30:53.000 And everyone agrees there was a resurrection.

00:30:55.000 But they also all agreed that they were female witnesses at the resurrection.

00:30:58.000 Very embarrassing.

00:30:59.000 No, embarrassing.

00:31:00.000 And by the way, multi-gospel.

00:31:02.000 That's right.

00:31:02.000 Every gospel says it.

00:31:03.000 So, but then also the discrepancies play against a unigospel central canon.

00:31:10.000 What is the right term?

00:31:11.000 Well, the term that there was a shared canon.

00:31:15.000 A Q document there.

00:31:17.000 Then they all.

00:31:18.000 Yeah, well, obviously what we're finding in the New Testament, well, maybe not obvious for everybody, is that we have multiple independent sources of certain events.

00:31:29.000 And when you Have that, you realize this isn't just one source.

00:31:33.000 This is several sources.

00:31:34.000 And there may be a problem for people who have a Bible under one binding.

00:31:36.000 They go, oh, this is just one book.

00:31:37.000 It's one source.

00:31:38.000 No, it's not.

00:31:39.000 These documents were written down in the New Testament, written down by eight or nine authors, depending upon who wrote Hebrews.

00:31:44.000 And they were written at different times in different places by people who were not in contact with one another all the time.

00:31:52.000 So I don't think that I don't, that's a pretty weak one.

00:31:54.000 That's the best AI could do.

00:31:56.000 Yeah.

00:31:57.000 I want to get to evolution in a second.

00:31:58.000 Okay.

00:31:59.000 Let me do this one.

00:32:00.000 I think I could do this one too.

00:32:02.000 If Jesus is fully God and fully man, how do you explain instances where he claims ignorance, not knowing the day or hour?

00:32:07.000 Well, he's not saying that he doesn't know.

00:32:08.000 He's just not telling you.

00:32:09.000 Well, that's one way of looking at it, or you can also say that Jesus had two natures.

00:32:14.000 He had a divine nature and a human nature.

00:32:16.000 And Jesus emptied himself of the privileges of his Godhead when he was on earth.

00:32:20.000 That's Philippians 2.

00:32:22.000 Partially, though.

00:32:22.000 There was still a divine aspect, right?

00:32:25.000 Right.

00:32:25.000 But whenever you ask a question about Jesus, you have to ask two questions.

00:32:28.000 Did Jesus know when he was coming back?

00:32:30.000 As God, yes, as man, no.

00:32:33.000 Did Jesus get hungry?

00:32:34.000 As God, no, as man, yes.

00:32:37.000 The incarnation is a tough issue.

00:32:38.000 Yes, when Jesus died on the cross, God didn't die.

00:32:42.000 The human nature of Jesus.

00:32:43.000 So here's the counter argument in AI.

00:32:46.000 They say that's a heresy in the fifth century that centered that Jesus had two separate persons, one human, one divine, rather than one person with two distinct natures.

00:32:54.000 Yes.

00:32:55.000 What's the difference?

00:32:56.000 Yes, he's one person with two natures.

00:32:58.000 He had a divine nature and a human nature.

00:33:00.000 Let's give an illustration from Nestorianism or something.

00:33:03.000 Yeah, Nestorianism.

00:33:04.000 Let's give an illustration from movies.

00:33:06.000 Not my favorite movie, but you remember Avatar?

00:33:08.000 Yeah.

00:33:08.000 Okay.

00:33:09.000 It's very environmental.

00:33:10.000 Yeah.

00:33:10.000 Earth worshiping.

00:33:11.000 So there's, remember the guy in the wheelchair?

00:33:14.000 And he would get in this and then he'd become something.

00:33:17.000 He'd be the avatar on the outside, right?

00:33:19.000 He's one person with two natures.

00:33:21.000 He has a human nature in the space station, in the wheelchair.

00:33:24.000 That's a good analogy.

00:33:25.000 And he has an avatar nature outside the space station.

00:33:29.000 Yeah, okay.

00:33:30.000 Got it.

00:33:31.000 That one's not that hard.

00:33:32.000 Here's one that I wouldn't know how to answer.

00:33:34.000 The evolution one, I'm not as equipped to answer because I don't know how important it is, and you could disagree.

00:33:41.000 But some people have dedicated their whole life to it.

00:33:43.000 I've never been that interested in it, actually.

00:33:45.000 I think we're created.

00:33:46.000 That's it.

00:33:46.000 I'm the end of story.

00:33:48.000 How we're created is the question.

00:33:49.000 If biological evolution is true and Adam and Eve are not literal historical figures, how do you preserve the doctrines of original sin, federal headship, and the need for the second Adam without unraveling the entire redemptive framework of Romans 5?

00:34:01.000 I mean, I think they are real historical.

00:34:03.000 Yeah, the first question I would ask them is: why do you think biological evolution is true?

00:34:07.000 Now, microevolution is true.

00:34:08.000 That's adaptation within a type, but macroevolution from the goo to you via the zoo is not true.

00:34:13.000 I think there's not only do I think there's not good evidence for it, Charlie, I think there's evidence against it.

00:34:18.000 Make the case.

00:34:19.000 All right, let me give you an acronym, L-I-F-E, life. 0.93

00:34:22.000 L stands for the fact that there is limited genetic capability for change.

00:34:28.000 For example, even intelligent breeders can't break the genus of dogs when they're trying to breed dogs, right?

00:34:35.000 They can get a dog as small as a chihuahua and as large as a great Dane, but they can't break the genus of dogs.

00:34:41.000 They can't turn a dog into something else just using that gene pool.

00:34:44.000 If we, using our intelligence, can't break that genus, genus of the genus of dogs, why do we think an unintelligent process can do so?

00:34:53.000 That doesn't make any sense.

00:34:54.000 Okay, the I stands for information.

00:34:57.000 The information we find in every one of our 40 trillion cells is equivalent to a message 3.2 billion letters long.

00:35:06.000 And to use an analogy, if you're walking along the beach and you see Charlie loves Erica in the sand, you don't assume the waves did that or crabs came out of the water and made that message.

00:35:16.000 You would say, that's evidence of an intelligent being, right?

00:35:21.000 Well, if Charlie loves Erica requires intelligence, why doesn't a message 3.2 billion letters long require intelligence?

00:35:30.000 Because the software program in any one of our, every one of our cells, our genome, DNA, is a one-to-one correspondence with digital code.

00:35:39.000 And we know that codes always come from coders.

00:35:41.000 We know that programs always come from programmers.

00:35:43.000 We know that messages always come from minds.

00:35:46.000 The longest message we've ever discovered is in every one of our 40 trillion cells.

00:35:51.000 That requires intelligence.

00:35:52.000 Now, it's a key point here we need to make is people will say that's a God of the gaps argument.

00:35:57.000 You're plugging God into the gap of your knowledge.

00:36:00.000 No, we're not.

00:36:00.000 We're not arguing from what we don't know.

00:36:03.000 We're arguing from what we do know.

00:36:05.000 When you see Charlie loves Erica in the sand, you don't just lack a natural explanation for that.

00:36:13.000 You have positive, empirically verifiable evidence for an intelligent being when you see that in the sand.

00:36:19.000 And so is that the I or the F?

00:36:22.000 That's the information.

00:36:22.000 That's the I. Keep going.

00:36:23.000 Information.

00:36:23.000 The F is the fossil record.

00:36:25.000 The fossil record is a complete embarrassment to evolutionists.

00:36:29.000 And even Richard Dawkins has noted this, that if you go back to the Cambrian explosion, according to their dating 523 million BC or 523 million years ago, somewhere in that range, 500 million years ago, you see all most of the major body plans just in the fossil record without fossil precursors.

00:36:51.000 It's as if they were just created there.

00:36:53.000 You don't see this tree of life.

00:36:57.000 Sure.

00:36:57.000 You see, if someone put a botanical illustration in place, it would be more like an orchard.

00:37:04.000 You would just see these body plans with some diversification at the top, but the body plans just come out of nowhere.

00:37:10.000 Ex-Nihilo.

00:37:11.000 Yeah.

00:37:12.000 Do you then, so is the age of the earth interesting to you, or is that you're more open-minded on?

00:37:18.000 I'm absolutely convinced the universe is at least 63 years old.

00:37:22.000 Okay.

00:37:23.000 I'm going to throw my mom in there. 1.00

00:37:25.000 It's at least 87 years old.

00:37:26.000 Perfect.

00:37:27.000 Okay, all right.

00:37:28.000 I think the better evidence it's old, and we can talk about that in a minute.

00:37:31.000 Let me finish.

00:37:31.000 Yes, let me finish the accuracy.

00:37:32.000 I'm sorry.

00:37:33.000 So the F is the fossil record.

00:37:35.000 The E is what's known as epigenetic information.

00:37:40.000 Scientists have discovered in recent decades that you can mutate DNA from now till doomsday.

00:37:47.000 You'll never get a new body plan.

00:37:48.000 Why?

00:37:49.000 Because DNA alone will not give you a new body plan.

00:37:53.000 You need the structure of the cell and the structure of the organism to change, and you can't mutate that by DNA.

00:38:02.000 You would need to go into the embryotic stage of a creature and change its gene regulatory network at the embryotic level in order to get a new body plan.

00:38:16.000 And if you did that, 100% of the time we've tried that, the organism has died.

00:38:21.000 So to get a new body plan, you just can't mutate DNA.

00:38:24.000 And this is why, Charlie, even the Royal Society, probably the biggest scientific affiliation or the most august scientific affiliation in the world out of London, once headed by Isaac Newton, called a meeting way back in 2016 to point out that we need a new theory of evolution because the current theory has too many problems.

00:38:46.000 And this is one of them.

00:38:47.000 You can't mutate DNA and get a new body plan.

00:38:49.000 You need epigenetic information.

00:38:51.000 An analogy would be that whereas the DNA might be the software for a particular, say, architecture program, the epigenetic information would be the hardware you need to build the house.

00:39:04.000 You can mutate the software all day.

00:39:07.000 You'll never get the hardware to build a house.

00:39:10.000 So those four, and there's other reasons, but those four issues, limited genetic change, information, fossil record, and epigenetic information shows that macroevolution does not appear plausible.

00:39:22.000 So then is macroevolution at odds with an older universe theory?

00:39:26.000 No, it would require an older universe theory, but the I'm sorry, creation.

00:39:33.000 If you believe we're created, which is a belief I have.

00:39:36.000 Sure.

00:39:37.000 Does that mean that you believe the universe is only 6,000 years old?

00:39:41.000 No.

00:39:42.000 Okay, so work through that.

00:39:44.000 Let's look at it biblically.

00:39:45.000 What does the first verse of the Bible say?

00:39:47.000 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

00:39:48.000 Okay, when was the beginning?

00:39:50.000 When God said it was.

00:39:51.000 We don't know.

00:39:52.000 It doesn't say, right?

00:39:53.000 Next verse says, and the earth was formless and void.

00:39:56.000 Wait a minute.

00:39:57.000 Wait, wait.

00:39:57.000 We've gone from God creating the whole universe in verse one to now we're talking about the earth.

00:40:04.000 How long did that take?

00:40:06.000 It doesn't say.

00:40:07.000 You say, what about the days?

00:40:09.000 The days don't begin until verse three.

00:40:12.000 Well, yeah, and so the day is yum.

00:40:15.000 Yeah.

00:40:15.000 But also a day is only possible as long as the sun exists.

00:40:20.000 Yeah, and that comes in day four, I believe.

00:40:21.000 Right, exactly.

00:40:22.000 So this is Dennis Prager's argument, which is that you don't, so the literalists would say, well, it's seven literal days.

00:40:28.000 Could be, I mean, it says yum.

00:40:29.000 Sure.

00:40:30.000 But using its own textual evidence, a day is only a revolution of the sun, the earth around the sun, right?

00:40:40.000 So if there's no sun, then what do we mean by day?

00:40:42.000 Exactly.

00:40:43.000 And not only that, and this is John Lennox's argument, that when you look at the first few verses of Genesis, as we just did, the Bible leaves the age of the earth indeterminate because it's saying that the universe is created before the days ever begin.

00:40:59.000 In fact, there are, we talked about this earlier, but for your audience, remember, the Bible is not written to you.

00:41:08.000 It's written for you.

00:41:09.000 Now, who was Genesis written to?

00:41:11.000 It was written to people who just spent 400 years under slavery in Egypt.

00:41:16.000 They're not asking the questions you and I are asking in 2025, Charlie.

00:41:20.000 They're not walking through the desert going, I wonder how old this place is.

00:41:24.000 You know, that's not your question.

00:41:26.000 Their question is, is Yahweh the true God or the gods of Egypt the true gods? 0.89

00:41:32.000 And scholars have looked at Genesis 1, and some of them are saying, you know what Genesis 1 is?

00:41:37.000 It's a polemic.

00:41:38.000 It's a corrective to the Egyptian creation story.

00:41:41.000 That's exactly right.

00:41:42.000 Because if you look at the Egyptian creation story, these pre-existing superhero gods, they're not explained, they just happen to exist already, have to fight one another to bring order to chaos.

00:41:53.000 That's the creation process.

00:41:54.000 Moses comes along and he says, no, Yahweh's outside the universe.

00:41:57.000 He just speaks and he brings order to chaos.

00:42:00.000 And God is not in nature.

00:42:02.000 He's outside of nature.

00:42:03.000 God is personal.

00:42:04.000 He's not abstract.

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00:43:00.000 Dial pound250 and say, Charlie, to speak with a trusted Medicare advisor.

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00:43:09.000 Okay, let me go to some of the other hard questions here.

00:43:14.000 This is a good one.

00:43:15.000 I've gotten this one before.

00:43:17.000 God describes himself as jealous in Exodus 34, but jealousy is a vice in human terms, born of insecurity and possessiveness.

00:43:26.000 How can a perfect, self-sufficient being experience jealousy without compromising his nature?

00:43:30.000 I had this question from a student at the University of California at Fresno.

00:43:36.000 Common or not common?

00:43:37.000 In 2010.

00:43:38.000 It happened two or three times.

00:43:39.000 Yeah, it's very, I've gotten it once.

00:43:41.000 Okay.

00:43:42.000 And I asked him this question.

00:43:43.000 I said, are you married?

00:43:44.000 He said, no.

00:43:46.000 I said, let's suppose for the sake of argument you were married.

00:43:50.000 If your wife decided that she was going to start dating other people, should you be jealous of that? 0.73

00:43:56.000 Of course you should.

00:43:57.000 Why?

00:43:58.000 In fact, she belongs to you and you belong to her. 0.85

00:44:03.000 And if you're not jealous of that relationship, there's something wrong with you.

00:44:10.000 She has broken the covenant and you want what's best for her and that is for her to stay in the covenant with you.

00:44:18.000 And that's what Yahweh does for the Israelites and us.

00:44:21.000 He's jealous of us because he knows that what's best for us is for us to stay in relationship with him.

00:44:29.000 And if you're not jealous over your loved one, there's something wrong with you.

00:44:36.000 So jealousy in that regard is a good thing. 1.00

00:44:39.000 Jealousy, when it comes to pettiness, that's not a good thing or things that you shouldn't possess anyway, right?

00:44:45.000 But it is good for people who you are in a relationship with, in a covenant with, you ought to guard that relationship.

00:44:53.000 That's a good thing.

00:44:56.000 If light was created on day one, but the sun not until day four, What is the nature of light then?

00:45:02.000 What is the nature of light?

00:45:03.000 Yeah, what light was, and this is just curious.

00:45:05.000 What light are they talking about?

00:45:07.000 Well, the light of God pre-existed prior to the light of the sun.

00:45:13.000 Right.

00:45:13.000 But I think, let me see here.

00:45:15.000 Day, I'm just looking at this now.

00:45:17.000 So God said, let there be light and there is light.

00:45:19.000 Yeah.

00:45:20.000 And he called the light day in the darkness night, but that was before he created the sun.

00:45:23.000 Yes.

00:45:24.000 Well, he has the ability to create light right from his own nature, quite obviously.

00:45:30.000 And the sun is just one body in the universe that creates light.

00:45:35.000 There are other suns.

00:45:36.000 There are other stars, obviously.

00:45:38.000 In fact, I've seen different estimates, but the number of stars in the universe are equivalent to the number of sand grains on all the beaches on all the earth times 10,000.

00:45:50.000 Now, when you think about that, that should evoke in us a sense of awe.

00:45:56.000 The heavens declare the glory of God, that you have stars equivalent to sand grains on 100,000 earths.

00:46:03.000 So God may have not created our sun until a certain point.

00:46:07.000 That doesn't mean other sources of light weren't created.

00:46:10.000 Makes sense.

00:46:11.000 All right.

00:46:12.000 We have time for a couple more.

00:46:13.000 Then I got to get you in front of our turning point staff here.

00:46:17.000 Let me see this one.

00:46:19.000 This is a simple yet deep, but you get it all the time, but I think our audience would really appreciate it.

00:46:24.000 Okay.

00:46:25.000 How can an all-good, all-powerful God coexist with the gratuitous, horrendous suffering of innocent children, natural disasters, and systemic injustice, especially when no greater good is apparent or accessible to the victims?

00:46:36.000 Okay.

00:46:37.000 You get it all the time.

00:46:38.000 I get it all the time.

00:46:38.000 But it blesses our audience.

00:46:40.000 Yes, yes.

00:46:41.000 First of all, there are so many assumptions in that question that would need to be challenged.

00:46:46.000 First of all, how do you know it's gratuitous?

00:46:47.000 How do you know it's not going to bring forth good later?

00:46:50.000 Sure, if life ends at the grave and there's no afterlife, there's a lot of injustices that occur.

00:46:56.000 But injustice only occurs if there's a standard of justice, and the standard of justice is God's nature.

00:47:01.000 If God doesn't exist, nothing's just or unjust.

00:47:04.000 So you can point that out.

00:47:06.000 You can also point out the fact that only if God exists do human beings have any objective value.

00:47:12.000 Totally.

00:47:12.000 And if they don't have objective value, there's nothing wrong with that.

00:47:16.000 So the whole question is a Christian question.

00:47:18.000 Sure, it is.

00:47:19.000 So if it's a Christian asking, then let's say, hey, Frank, I believe in God.

00:47:24.000 I struggle to think he's good.

00:47:26.000 I agree.

00:47:26.000 Yeah.

00:47:27.000 That's a better question, right?

00:47:29.000 I'm a Christian.

00:47:30.000 I believe in God.

00:47:31.000 I have a trouble believing that he's all good when a tsunami wipes out 100,000 people.

00:47:35.000 Yeah, agreed.

00:47:36.000 Okay.

00:47:36.000 That's a tough answer.

00:47:37.000 That is a great question.

00:47:38.000 And I told you on our walk last night, that's the hardest question I get.

00:47:41.000 Totally.

00:47:41.000 The natural disaster is the hardest.

00:47:43.000 And here's the answer that has helped me because I've studied this and it bothered me.

00:47:49.000 And if evil doesn't bother you, you probably haven't thought about it enough.

00:47:53.000 You're supposed to hate evil in Psalm 97, 10.

00:47:55.000 That's right.

00:47:56.000 We're actually commanded as Christians.

00:47:57.000 That's evil.

00:47:58.000 That's right.

00:47:58.000 Love doesn't mean approval.

00:47:59.000 Correct.

00:48:00.000 Okay.

00:48:00.000 So this is what unlocked it for me, Charlie.

00:48:04.000 If you ask me, say, why do babies die?

00:48:08.000 I can give you a general answer.

00:48:10.000 I know why babies die because we live in a fallen world.

00:48:13.000 Okay.

00:48:14.000 But if you ask me, why did this particular baby die?

00:48:17.000 I can't tell you why, but I can tell you why I don't know why.

00:48:21.000 Because I'm finite.

00:48:22.000 I'm inside of time.

00:48:24.000 And I don't know how all this is going to turn out ultimately.

00:48:28.000 But if there's a being outside of time that can trace all of the ripples, this is called the ripple effect.

00:48:35.000 That every event in this world ripples forward to affect trillions of other events and potentially billions of people.

00:48:43.000 We can't trace all those ripples.

00:48:45.000 Maybe a baby dying today ripples forward through free creatures to bring forth a great evangelist 500 years from now who saves millions of people.

00:48:55.000 Can I trace all those ripples?

00:48:56.000 I can't, but a God outside of time can.

00:48:59.000 And so the ripple effect, while it doesn't give us a specific answer, it helps us to understand that there is an answer, even if we don't know what it is.

00:49:09.000 And there is a teaching.

00:49:10.000 John MacArthur would say this, that children do go to heaven.

00:49:16.000 And would you agree with that?

00:49:18.000 Because it says God will gather the children to him.

00:49:21.000 Would you agree with that?

00:49:22.000 Yes, and I would go to the Old Testament too when David loses his son.

00:49:26.000 He says, I will not, or the son will not return to me.

00:49:29.000 I will Go to him.

00:49:30.000 The baby died.

00:49:31.000 That's right.

00:49:32.000 So, yes, I think God is going to bring people to heaven.

00:49:35.000 But I would also say this, that the ripple effect explains so much.

00:49:39.000 The ripple effect you see in the story of Joseph in the Old Testament, his brothers do evil.

00:49:44.000 They sell him into slavery.

00:49:46.000 And then they, you know, he goes through all sorts of evil in Egypt, but he somehow rises to power and he puts a whole bunch of grain aside.

00:49:55.000 He's like the number two guy in Egypt.

00:49:57.000 And then his brothers flee Israel to escape a famine.

00:50:02.000 And as soon as Joseph sees him, what does he say?

00:50:05.000 He says, you dirty rat, you're going to pay for what you did to me.

00:50:07.000 No, he doesn't say that.

00:50:08.000 He said, what you meant for evil, God meant for Genesis 50, 20.

00:50:12.000 The saving of many lives.

00:50:13.000 Exactly.

00:50:14.000 The evil they did rippled forward to help them later.

00:50:17.000 Most of the time, we don't see the ripple effect.

00:50:20.000 In this case, we do.

00:50:21.000 You know, there was a Roman Catholic priest in Notre Dame in Paris 150 years ago who said this.

00:50:28.000 This is one of the best quotes, I think, on this topic.

00:50:31.000 He said, if you were to give me God's power for 24 hours, you would see how many changes I would make in this world.

00:50:38.000 But if he gave me his wisdom too, I would leave things as they are.

00:50:43.000 Because God is working.

00:50:45.000 We're to fight evil because we don't know where it's going to wind up, but God can even allow evil that gets through to bring good later to those that love him and are called according to his purpose.

00:50:55.000 And by the way, one last thing on this.

00:50:56.000 Any God who is big enough for you and me to be mad at is big enough to have reasons we don't know about.

00:51:04.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:51:05.000 Right?

00:51:06.000 The great quote from Dennis, he got it from a rabbi, is that we as theists have to explain child suffering, natural disasters, and atheists have to explain everything else. 0.50

00:51:16.000 Everything else.

00:51:17.000 Existence.

00:51:18.000 That's right.

00:51:18.000 Love, mercy, joy, forgiveness.

00:51:20.000 So we have our challenge in front of us.

00:51:22.000 Right.

00:51:22.000 All right, let me do one more here.

00:51:24.000 But can I say one other thing on that?

00:51:25.000 Evil doesn't disprove God.

00:51:26.000 It actually shows God does exist.

00:51:28.000 Yeah, Peep going.

00:51:29.000 Because there'd be no such thing as evil unless there was good, and there'd be no such thing as good unless God existed.

00:51:34.000 Because evil is not a thing in itself.

00:51:36.000 It's a lack in a good thing.

00:51:38.000 It's like cancer.

00:51:39.000 If you take all the cancer out of a good body, you got a better body.

00:51:42.000 If you take all the body out of the cancer, you've got nothing.

00:51:45.000 Or it's like rust in a car.

00:51:47.000 If you take all the rust out of a car, you got a better car.

00:51:49.000 If you take all the car out of the rust, you got a pinto.

00:51:53.000 No, you got nothing, right?

00:51:54.000 It doesn't exist on its own.

00:51:57.000 So evil is a lack in a good thing, but good in an objective sense only exists if God exists.

00:52:03.000 If God doesn't exist, nothing's good or bad.

00:52:05.000 Things are just different, and evil doesn't exist.

00:52:09.000 So evil doesn't disprove God.

00:52:10.000 It may prove there's a devil out there, but it doesn't disprove God.

00:52:13.000 Okay, here's the last one.

00:52:15.000 How can an absolutely perfect, changeless, timeless, necessary being who lacks nothing create a contingent, temporal, change-filled universe without undergoing change or acquiring a new will?

00:52:26.000 Well, there are theologians like William Lane Craig who would argue that when God created, he entered time.

00:52:32.000 I don't agree with that, but that's a view that some Christians take.

00:52:36.000 It doesn't feel like it's God.

00:52:37.000 He could do whatever he wants.

00:52:38.000 Yeah, right.

00:52:38.000 Anything, everything he wants, it's not logically impossible.

00:52:41.000 Like, he can't create a square circle or a one-ended stick.

00:52:44.000 But no, but he created the rules of reason, though.

00:52:47.000 Well, he didn't.

00:52:47.000 He can recreate it.

00:52:48.000 He is the rules of reason.

00:52:49.000 So I don't think he created them.

00:52:51.000 I think they're his nature, just like his moral nature.

00:52:55.000 So then how would you answer this question?

00:52:57.000 The one, the one I just said.

00:52:59.000 Oh, how could a timeless, necessary being who lacks nothing create a contingent, temporal, change-filled universe?

00:53:05.000 I don't see why that would be a problem.

00:53:06.000 I don't understand why that would be an issue.

00:53:10.000 What's the paradox?

00:53:11.000 How can a being that doesn't change or do anything new suddenly do something like create a world?

00:53:17.000 Who's to say, when we say God doesn't change, it doesn't mean that he doesn't act.

00:53:21.000 What it means is his nature doesn't change.

00:53:23.000 Yeah, I agree with that.

00:53:24.000 His nature doesn't change.

00:53:26.000 He's always good.

00:53:27.000 He's always moral.

00:53:28.000 He's always just.

00:53:28.000 He's always loving, right?

00:53:30.000 It doesn't mean he can't do things.

00:53:32.000 It means that his nature doesn't change.

00:53:35.000 Yeah, so then they would also say there's a dilemma of God did not freely choose to create, which is not true.

00:53:41.000 The universe is co-eternal with God.

00:53:43.000 We don't believe that.

00:53:43.000 No, no, no, not co-eternal.

00:53:44.000 Or that God changes.

00:53:45.000 We say that God acts, not changes.

00:53:47.000 His nature is eternal.

00:53:49.000 Yes, his nature doesn't change.

00:53:51.000 He is the standard of goodness, the standard of rightness, the standard of life.

00:53:54.000 That's really interesting what you're saying.

00:53:55.000 So you're saying geometry, math, that's all the language of God.

00:53:59.000 Yes.

00:53:59.000 The physics, chemistry.

00:54:01.000 No, physics can be different because they're not based on his nature, but morality can't be different because it is based on his name.

00:54:08.000 But is math and geometry based on his nature?

00:54:11.000 Yes.

00:54:11.000 Because Why would geometry be yes and physics be no?

00:54:15.000 Because, well, if in all possible worlds, two plus two equals four, but not in all possible worlds does gravity have to be the strength that it is.

00:54:24.000 Sure.

00:54:25.000 Right.

00:54:26.000 And so then in all possible worlds, a square circle can never exist.

00:54:29.000 Yeah, because it's a logical contradiction.

00:54:32.000 Got it.

00:54:32.000 Right?

00:54:33.000 We make, since it's a political show, we'll, I always say.

00:54:36.000 Does force always have to equal mass times acceleration?

00:54:40.000 I don't know if God could create a different universe where that was reversed.

00:54:44.000 This is what we always say: that God can't do impossible things.

00:54:48.000 He can't create a square circle.

00:54:49.000 He can't create a one-ended stick.

00:54:51.000 He can't create a married bachelor.

00:54:52.000 He can't create an honest politician.

00:54:55.000 There's some things that are just too hard for God.

00:54:57.000 Yes.

00:54:58.000 And so then, does that undermine the idea that God can do everything?

00:55:03.000 When we say God is all-powerful, we don't mean he can do everything.

00:55:07.000 What we mean is he can do everything consistent with his nature.

00:55:12.000 So he couldn't make two plus two equals five because his nature is such that his nature is logic, is truth.

00:55:21.000 He could create a different universe because that's within his power, but he can't create a universe that has square circles in it because it's not possible given his nature.

00:55:34.000 So when we say God is all-powerful, it doesn't mean he can do everything.

00:55:38.000 He can do everything that's not logically impossible or that contradicts with his nature.

00:55:42.000 Got it.

00:55:43.000 Frank Turek, how do people find out more?

00:55:45.000 CroseExamine.org.

00:55:47.000 Plus, we have a podcast twice a week.

00:55:49.000 I don't have enough faith to be an atheist podcast.

00:55:51.000 We have a TV show.

00:55:52.000 Go to croseexamine.org.

00:55:54.000 There's so much on there.

00:55:55.000 We've got a YouTube channel, obviously, Cross-Examine.

00:55:58.000 We have Facebook.

00:55:58.000 We have Instagram, TikTok, the whole deal.

00:56:01.000 Got it.

00:56:01.000 Thanks so much, Frank.

00:56:02.000 God bless you, Sarah.

00:56:03.000 Thank you.

00:56:04.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:56:05.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:56:08.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - August 08, 2025

Defeating AI's Best Arguments Against God ft. Frank Turek

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