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Q/A With a Friend: Can the Bible be Trusted?

For The King — FTK
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Q/A With a Friend: Can the Bible be Trusted?

May 26, 2021
For The King
For The KingFTK

This week, I am joined with a few friends of mine. Matt got his degree in supply chain management and had some questions for us today concerning the validity of the bible and the Christian worldview. I am also joined by my friends Carter and Noah who are brothers. Carter is a mechanical engineer and Noah just finished his degree in biomedical engineering.  Matt asks us many questions concerning how we can trust the bible and what Christians believe are the very words of God. Join us and listen to matts questions and how we handle answering them. We are all really good friends so there is no hard feelings but only love between us all. Enjoy the conversation and please reach out if any points were interesting to you or baseless. Thanks for listening! Continued learning: Textual Criticism  - https://www.britannica.com/topic/textual-criticism - https://www.gotquestions.org/textual-criticism.html - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_criticism Christian Society - https://www.equip.org/article/jesus-shaped-cultures-faithful-christians-transformed-societies/ - https://christintheclassroom.org/vol_18/18cc_355-358.htm -> Sociology of a Christian worldview Inquiries to : forthekingpodcast@gmail.com Website: https://forthekingpodcast.com/

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Transcript

(music)
I don't know, like... It'll take 10 minutes. This should take about 30 seconds to win you over. (laughter) It's so reasonable.
Oh. It's so obvious. Wait, should I reiterate the, like, question that I asked? Sure, yeah, yeah, reiterate it.
So the question I asked was, what, how could you prove to me that everything in the Bible is true without using the scripture to prove itself? Yeah, I guess. I think I'm gonna name this episode, "My Friend Had a Question." I mean, I have a couple questions I'm sure I could go through, but after, like, talking about this, it would probably go the next one and go to the next one. Yeah.
Um, does somebody else want to give a crack at it? Or I always have something to say. I talk a lot in this situation, so... So, I mean, you said without using the scripture to prove itself. Yeah.
I mean, because I don't know if that's, like, a condition you can actually set because... Oh, I mean, it also depends on... Okay. This actually is a long conversation. It's gonna take a second to unpack everything.
Yeah, it's fine. The Bible itself is made up of several different books, right? Yeah. So, like, if you're talking about the Old Testament, you could, um... You know, each book you can use the same historical criteria you use for anything else.
Like, we look at the history of people like Charlemagne and, like... Alexander the Great. Great. So, historians recorded their actions hundreds of years after that actually took place, but historians still consider them, like, accurate.
Even. So, the events... Like, let's just talk about the New Testament, the life of Christ. The events recorded in the Bible took place only a couple decades before... Wait, yeah.
The events that are described by the books only took place a couple decades earlier. Yes. Which means the time that had passed since they were written is irrelevant.
What is important is the time between when the events actually took place and then the recording was written, right? And another one on top of that is that there were people still alive during the time that it was written who could have come out and say, "No, this is false." But those who were alive were eyewitnesses to these events that happened as they were written. So, when then they read the book, so, yeah, I was left with that. I remember that.
Can't do that with Charlemagne. Can't do that with Alexander the Great, yet historians still agree that that is... Yeah. That Alexander the Great was a historically real person.
Yeah. This whole process is called textual criticism. And you do it with any text, any historical text you would encounter.
You look at the number of manuscripts. You look at what they're saying. Eyewitnesses accounts of the people mentioned inside of it.
If humans are mentioned, if it's not just a philosophical work where they're just talking about random abstract things, I think if they name drop people, are there eyewitnesses that would have been alive at the time of the recording, that kind of stuff. Does it match up with other texts outside of it, events described? If there's an event that happens, like the death of Christ, there are people like Josephus and many other... The resurrection of Christ. The resurrection of Christ, like there are, there's pottery.
There's all sorts of things that record that event that are outside of the Bible. So there's a ton of different criteria for how you would criticize a text, an ancient text. Yeah.
And the Bible is on, in terms of like, you can't be 100% certain, but on terms of like unsound to sound, sound being like you're pretty certain, unsound being, it's probably not true. It's on this side of history, like a sound document, just like the Homer's, or sorry, Homer's, the Iliad and Odyssey. Those manuscripts, a very similar day, I think those are written maybe two to 300 years before Christ was crucified and raised again.
But there's only about 20 manuscripts for those. We have over 3000 for like the New Testament text. And we teach Homer's, Iliad and Odyssey in schools.
Like, yeah. That was my understanding. There was always myth though.
Sorry, it's myth, but we're confident that this really is what Homer wrote. That's what I'm saying. Oh, okay.
I get what you're saying.
And everybody, all historians agree, like this text, Homer's Iliad is, yeah, we have it still. It hasn't been lost.
So if you think like, oh, the Bible has been changed and it's lost, it's like, well, you should probably stop teaching all Homer stuff. You shouldn't read that for when you want to learn about ancient Greek texts. Yeah.
If that makes sense.
Right. There's also an argument where a lot of what's recorded in the New Testament is just like legend, like his disciples just came up with these elaborate stories.
God proclaimed himself to, sorry, Christ proclaimed himself to be God and he rose from the dead, even though it didn't actually happen. Yeah. I mean, one thing you can look at is the fact that these disciples actually lost their lives because they refuse to say otherwise.
Like they actually firmly believe
what they were saying and what was recorded in the New Testament. Yeah. So yeah, people wouldn't go to the grave over a line.
Right. It's like, why wouldn't they just say, okay, okay, I made it all up. Yeah.
No, I saw Jesus. I saw him die and I saw him alive.
One more point that I'd love to hear what you think.
Just based on that, like Muslim people,
when they come to Qazi and they murder themselves or whatever for the sake of the faith. Oh, yeah. Uh, that is in response to what they just believe.
Yeah. The apostles died in response to what they saw with their eyes. Yeah.
There's a difference there in terms of the validity of what they're dying for. So that's another point too. So in terms of, yeah, I think those are all really good, especially for the New Testament.
But like when looking at the Old Testament, one of the things that stood out to me was the unity between all the authors that you have. I mean, I don't know how many like people. It's 40 different authors.
Yeah. Six books. Okay.
So all 40 authors like have all a continuous,
basically storyline pointing towards the coming of Christ. And so just because of the unity between all these authors who didn't know each other and didn't talk to each other, having very, very similar themes points to this, points to that, the property that all the scriptures are divinely inspired. So which means that God uses the Holy Spirit through these authors to write down for God's people, his words.
So one more thing about the authenticity. You want that's right. In turn, no, it's fine.
This is what I want.
This is what I love. So just the authenticity of the Old Testament.
We know the Old Testament is actually the writings that the ancient Hebrews used because so, I mean, you can look at, I think we have copies of the Septuagint. What's called the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. So up until recently, probably like, I guess it was actually half a century ago, we had something called the Masoretic text.
So a Hebrew family, they basically passed down the Old Testament scriptures from generation to generation. And they were eventually put into the Bible. But now, in 1970s something, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.
And that was a major discovery because these scrolls are thousands of years old. Maybe a couple thousand years old. Yeah, a little over 2000.
Basically, before the life of Christ. They're in Hebrew too, right? They're in Hebrew. Yes.
So, yeah, and they, like, when compared to the Masoretic text, they were found to be almost exactly the same. So we know that the Masoretic text is also accurate, basically. Because they were very similar.
Right. So we have solid historical evidence that what is contained in the Bible are the actual texts that the ancient Hebrews used. Yeah.
What do you think about all that? Anything stick out, like, seems more compelling than something else, or? I know through a lot of, like, my own, like, just kind of, like, looking stuff up. And then also, like, you know how, like, they have shows about, like, all the history and everything. Like, all that I've watched.
They definitely, every time I've, like, come across that, they definitely said that the Bible is the most accurate text because of the amount of times it was, like, I don't want to say rewritten, but, like, recopied, right? The amount of times in between, like, the time between each time they did that was, like, really small, is what they said. So, like, they, it just wouldn't, it would be, like, almost impossible, or so little minor details were changed that it wouldn't be. Exactly.
They didn't have printing presses, so, like, how did you propagate, like, this text? You would use monks to just, like, hand copy all these different manuscripts of the scriptures that they had. There are monks. But for how old it was, they said that it was the most accurate.
Yeah. And it's still... Their oral tradition was, like, highly valued. Yes.
From young children were taught the whole scriptures. They memorized it. Yeah.
Like, they basically worshiped the text. Yeah. Uh, am I playing, like, devil's advocate on the thing that Carter said on, um... Oh, Carter.
Oh, Carter's advocate. Yeah. Carter's the weak link.
Oh my gosh. [Laughter] I'm the devil. I'm the more the beauty of that.
No, but, uh, I think that's the term for it, where you just... Yeah, no, yeah, no, yeah. So, um... What's the, what's the one about that from the devil? Yeah. No, I'm kidding.
No, yeah. Um... I think the argument, maybe, for that is, like, like, when you say, like, it was all one continuous thing, couldn't you have just gone based off the previous one and then just continue writing? It almost says it's, like, say I wrote chapter one and I gave it to you and you just kept writing chapter two. So, Moses wrote the Pentateuch and they all had that.
But then, do you guys know how the prophets... I guess, knew how each other's types... Does that make sense? Yeah, I think I did read about that one time, but yeah, you go. Sorry. Well, I know, um, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah all lived during the same exile.
Uh, the same exile. So, like, they're writing these things and, you know, it's all kind of matching up and Jeremiah stayed with Israel in the land of Canaan. Ezekiel actually went over to that.
Yeah. Like, they were separated. They all had different audiences.
Sure, yeah. Different things that they were writing on. So, it wasn't like, yeah, Ezekiel wrote part A and then Jeremiah wrote part B. They were all writing different parallel things, still the, um, oracles that God gave to them.
Yeah, so some of them were writing at the same time, but they definitely would have had Moses' stuff that they would have read and referred to. Yeah. That's what I was referring to.
So, you're saying they can keep going back and saying, "This is the God that they set up. God looks like this. Moses told us." So, if we're going to write about God, we better make sure it looks just like what Moses said.
Or, like, I mean, yeah, um, like, that's like really close to how I put it. Like, they would just like, you know, I mean, you would just try and make it as, like, close as possible, right? Sure. Like, yeah, like, you wouldn't want to, like, make it not like that.
Like, that just makes the story look weirder. Like, you're like, "Why is it? That doesn't make sense." So, I think one thing to consider there, um, yeah, I need to find the study that was done. Do what? I should have asked you guys these questions, like, before and then let you guys, like, think about it for a second.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, um, it's good to, like, be able to think on the spot, though, to have comprehension skills. So, I know there is a study that was done with authors, just normal world-class authors that have written many books and published many books, and they were put in separate rooms and given a few, um, constraints on the story and were, um, basically requested to try to make a story that's coherent with all the others.
Yeah. Um, that's like a series, kind of like how JAR Tolkien wrote, uh, Lord of the Rings and a trilogy, and they all kind of build off of each other. So, they, they, they had the authors try to build a story that kind of built on each other without ever having, like, really strong contradictions, and they were unable to do it.
Yeah. So, like, again, if it's written over hundreds of years, I mean, these guys were given it at the same time with the same culture, like, Ezekiel's in Babylon in a different culture, being shaped and influenced by the culture, like, they gave many authors that were, right, and it's just very difficult to pull something like that off. Yeah.
So, um, I would say plausibility, that could have happened. They could have just made sure that they complied with the God that was presented before. There's actually some... But is it hard to do? Yeah.
And I would put it more in the, like, I, I would be surprised if they pulled that out. Yeah. Put, like, more of a, I would bet my money on it that they were just telling the truth and everything.
Yes. And so there is, like, that's what I think about that. There is, like, I guess, um, discussion in the academic realm about what, like, how the Bible was organized.
So some of it was, I forget what it's called exactly, but, you know, like, the
priests organized it in this way, and then, like, at a later time they organized it in this way. Oh, yes. Yeah.
It's like J-E... I don't want to say the last two, but it's, like, an acronym that says or something. You know what I'm talking about? I know what you mean, how they reorganized the books based on chronology, and, yeah, they used to reorder them. So there was some, like, kind of post-processing that they used, because, like, you know, the book of Psalms that we have now, it's four different books.
So somebody took all the songs that the
Jews would sing, like, during these, the times of the feast and the festivals, and then put them all together into, like, oh, this is a Psalm of the sentence. The text has remained the same, though. They have reorganized it.
Yeah. Switch things around, I guess. And then, like, even at a later time added chapters and verses.
Exactly, yeah. Chapters and verses are not inspired. Yeah.
So I guess, like, all of this goes to show that what we have contained in the Bible
is accurate. Like, we know it's historically sound, but then, like, there's also the question of how do you know that this is the true creator God and that Jesus is... Yeah. Or that this is his word.
How does this transcend... Yeah. Before we go to God, can I add one more thing real quick about society? No. All right.
I'll allow it. Can I get a hand? I need a majority.
Just pass the baton to him.
All right. Before we go straight to the whole, like, does it represent God accurately? One other thing that I find very compelling is the kind of societies that are built on what the Bible says. So there's different world views that produce different societies.
So atheistic materialism will produce something that looks like communism, socialism, things like that. It will produce a very bad society. And the modern atheists would try their hardest to argue otherwise, but it is... They can't not... I would offer some people who think that's good.
Like, can you give some examples of why that's
not good? Communism and socialism and all that? Yeah. Okay. So the self-evident rights that we recognize that we have as humans, those are basically trampled on in something like that.
So the authority is given to other humans
that also cannot think clearly all the time and they're given rule over you and you have to obey them no matter what. And that's not freedom. That's not liberty.
And if you don't, you're taken away and killed and made an example of what's happening in the USSR. And it's happening in China. It's happening, yeah, today in the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party.
Yeah. So it does it... It basically... What humans have always thought of what it means to be a human in terms of flourishing, having life, happiness, joy, freedom, all that kind of stuff that has always prevailed, but not in every society, is built by something other than Christianity. And the only worldview that actually upholds that kind of society that we as humans are like, "This is what it means to be a human." I can sense that these things innate in me as a human that love, flourishing, liberty, freedoms, that kind of thing, that we just inherently are like, "I want that." The only time that's upheld is in a Christian society.
So the let alone like, yeah, it says
that being gay is evil and wrong. It says that. And in our culture, they would war against that.
So maybe, you know, obviously, we live in America, so we have to think, man, like, is that right or is that wrong? Like, is scripture inspired or is that wrong? And it's like, well, the societies that allowed such a thing, crumbled and were destroyed. Rome was one of the greatest empires we've ever seen. But then when they started to let homosexuality into their culture, they went down and the manly barbarians that weren't homosexual came in and destroyed them.
So it's like this ethic, the things
that were given about what's right, about what you build societies on, about what justice is, that all comes from Christianity. So when you build a society, it seems like it's best built on a Christian ethic, which stretches back thousands of years. So that would be before we get to God, you know, first, we just talk about the text itself.
And
then I think you can kind of see if the text is correct, just based on does it produce a good society and human flourishing? It seems like it does. It seems like it produced the only country in human history that abolished slavery. Like, that was a Christian nation that did that.
It's Christianity, like, these things that we love, that we think are good about humanity comes from Christianity. And then yeah, does it accurately, accurately represent what we think God would be like? Just to clarify a point really quick, I think like Christianity, I said something that's kind of a lot. I said something wrong.
I think we should define Christianity because I
think like some people would consider like Roman Catholicism. Like that's Christianity. Like, yeah, it was the Christians who did the crusades.
No, that's not true. The Christians are those who
are legitimately followers of Jesus Christ. Yeah, the church, the church of God who is his blood bought people who are now like his people, they are his God and were like drawn as Paul says in I think the beginning of Colossians who have taken them out of the kingdom of darkness and transfer that into the kingdom of his beloved son.
Yeah, they're the people who have been born again
by the Spirit of God in like a supernatural way due to the workings of the risen Christ. And that's that they're part of now the kingdom of heaven. And so that's what this is.
This is
just an earthly manifestation in an earthly kingdom of the kingdom of heaven. Yeah, exactly. Your flourishing will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And pointing back to you, I kind of go
back to the vision that Daniel has of like the earth. It's I think the King's vision and he of this statue of like all these earthly kingdoms and then like this rock that was touched by human hands came, which is like the kingdom of heaven comes and destroys it. So all these earthly kingdoms fall, but like what really remains is Christ's kingdom.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
So there
have been instances of quote unquote Christians that have done things like crusades, Spanish Inquisition, all that kind of stuff where they like they behead people because you don't believe this or you get burned at the stake if you're a homoception. This if you're if somebody thinks you're a witch, I'm gonna if you know all the you've heard the Salem stuff. No, yeah.
Where you the
Salem witch trials like stuff like that. It's sure. It's even with like other religions too.
You know what I mean? Like even with like the little like 9/11 attacks and stuff like, you know, I mean the people that like actually believe in like whatever they believed, right? Like they don't claim them. You know what I mean? They're like that's that wasn't our people. Exactly.
Yeah.
And he goes across the border like yeah. So the claim is what the Bible says versus how people interact with it and then go and try and build a society.
The ones that actually are faithful to
what it literally says don't go around burning people at the stake and oppressing people and making people pay indulgences if they want to go to heaven and do all sorts of stuff like that. You have to be able to differentiate the things that people do in the name of God versus you know the actual God himself. Yeah.
Not all those who say Lord, Lord will be saved. Who was
who was the guy that was making people be like yeah if you just pay the church like you can go to heaven. Who was that? I can't remember.
It's one of the popes. Wasn't it like Martin Luther or
something like that? Whoa. All right.
New partners again. Oh really? There's like literally the
reason why that's not a thing anymore. Oh okay.
Well maybe that's why like I thought it was his
name right off the bat. Yeah. Well that's funny.
Yeah it is funny that I like completely like
I don't want to say slandered but like yeah. It was the Catholic Church in the 13th century. Oh okay.
While doing that. Yeah yeah yeah. It was the great Sith Lord.
It's like oh it's uh
it's Skywalker right? Yeah yeah yeah. Whoops. Yeah.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was evil.
No. I think Jar Jar Binks is a Sith Lord.
All right hold on. Let's bring it back boys.
Jar Jar is so evil.
What's Jar Jar? Jar Jar is an evil dude. Yeah dude. He's a fearful dude but not
fearful towards God.
No. True. Well well put.
Jar Jar does not feel.
Okay. Actually he might.
Did you answer that question? Actually he might but uh he was also
fearful for everything. It's not worse now. Sorry.
Sorry I brought it up. No no no. This is carvish ball.
No it's good. Do you have good reason to believe what the bible says is true or what would compel you to believe that the bible is true? Do I have like personal reasons that? Sure. I would um that is a good question.
I
I think with it sticking around so long as well as like what just like all the reasons I mean you guys have said like the society thing like is definitely a good point and um I think just so many people just like they're they like what I think in one of your podcasts previous podcasts is that like meta to just like quote another different podcast in the podcast? This is podcast exception. I get to finally put my own podcast in the show notes. Yeah.
My own material.
Congratulations. Some awesome podcast that said this.
It was like when you were talking about
a Nikola Tesla and you were um you were saying how like it just seems like a lot of like the geniuses or like people that know are like you know considered really smart right? Usually they say some like kind of weird stuff about how like either an angel, a demon, god or like someone let him know like ideas or like how to do things that they've been struggling with and like they all of a sudden just figure it out and they never like claim that they themselves you know what I mean did it like did it themselves? I mean on some of them they did obviously because like some of the things they really did just like fix it down and think about it but like yeah I think it's just like the consistency across that like I seem to notice that like that's consistent like it's just starting to like add up slowly more and more like the more you think about like all these things. That's good. I'm sure I'm sure I have like one really good reason but I can't think of it right now like dude it's like you got good then yeah probably what we said it's mainly because I just my memory is just from what we said do you feel more confident in the bible from what you said yeah like just during this going into this conversation were you skeptical of the bible or were you just were you already like I bet the bible is true but I would like to know what what like they would say I just like to hear both sides for sure because I yeah I I think I'm one just one of those people that like wants to know the truth like just wholeheartedly like yeah and I mean I think not taking into consideration that it could be wrong or like it could be right I think that's like an issue in and of itself and yeah I think that like blindly following something is just like dangerous dangerous it is so that's how communism happens yeah um right yeah I mean I think I just like I think if you're a christian that doesn't question even like itself like I think that's concerning to me personally yeah I just I'm very skeptical about a lot of things but so that that might just be me so I know there's plenty of people that would just be like oh if you're even like skeptical one time like you're not like yeah you know people that say there are people that say that and they just truly believe in that's great but I don't know yeah I mean I was kind of like that like there was a time where I just wanted to know what was true so you know I did I did my due diligence and um like it's right that you should want to think for yourself and confirm what is actually true because what is true is reasonable it's sound I mean yeah and like everything I've learned thus far seems to indicate that all truth comes from God and all truth points back to God and if in Christ Jesus is God so and he's given us a word that we can know and honestly that's a good point I think that is one great privilege of being a Christian is first of all we're saved by grace and we're actually I think the only ones that have an actual good understanding of anthropology what humans are like that they're sinful and I'm saved from my own sin and that's such a privilege but having the having the Bible where you don't have to wonder what's true anymore like you still do should be skeptical and test things but like what's cool about the Bible is when you read a science textbook they will tell you all the theories they have yeah it's a theory though it's not a law and you can have laws that are trustworthy but they don't tell you how to live all they do is describe how bodies move the laws of how this world of this universe exactly but they don't tell you anything about us they can they can tell you how your circulatory system works how your brain your neuron synapses fire they can tell you all how bodies move yeah and when I say bodies I just mean stuff but they'll never be able to tell you a single thing about love yeah and they'll never be able to tell you anything about peace like some of the fundamental questions that people have and need to answer is where do we come from why are we here what's our purpose and then where are we going yep it's every worldview has to interpret all those questions and view that is is congruent with what the worldview is and I think Christianity does that the best among all world religions based on just the way that I see the world is in its brokenness and in the way that um christ came and lived and the way that and what he's promised and what he's done and what he's fulfilled and the way that the world is is now and it's still yes it's sinfulness but also in just a personal witness in my own life of what christ has done in my own life yeah what's the thing Occam's razor yeah like what is that the most likely the most likely answer is the one where there's the least amount of assumptions that's what Occam's razor is it's a philosophical tool to basically get rid of any theory that has more assumptions in it because every time you make an assumption you're liable to making um a fault yeah it can mess up every assumption is just it's assumed because then what it is you have to jump from like a from one point to another based on a like from one claim to another based on insufficient evidence so science tends to do that a lot unfortunately yeah exactly i think science has more of those than christianity so actually among going i'm gonna like not i guess not directly quote this time but like i'm gonna like refer to another podcast um i don't know which one it which one it is uh and um it was you said something about how it might have been the one with zac i think yeah it was um where you guys were talking about the magi star yeah yeah and uh you guys you were saying how some scientists like well they you know when they're making like a theory or they're making a um you know doing an experiment they're like oh we just need this one piece and everything works out right so they'll just like put something in yeah well i'm here to tell you that my biology teacher to my face he does he's and i don't know what the insect scientist is called okay but he did he's like his focus was insects and he literally told me that he had lied in his you know like when people say you know what people you know what people say are like lab notebook no no no in the um you know like scientific like papers like you know when you look up and everyone's like oh you're not looking up like the scientific or the official medical thing and his official thing he he put assumptions like what you said and just lied so that his data would work and he says he says his fellow scientists do that all the time yeah yeah those are like what people like will start that's what people are like strictly attacking other people and referencing like oh you didn't like buy the 250 dollar like 400 page report but they're lying in those or they're not entirely lying there they might have just put one tiny little like assumption that generally is right but they don't you're just making the data fit basically yeah and it's like does that i think that's when i started to get concerned about anything i guess yeah because science is a method more than it is what it has become an ideology that yeah yeah so when they do that that's called scientism that is making science a worldview scientism is the belief that science is the only source or way to know truth and the white lab coats they're actually religious robes yeah that's not what i told you that crap all the time well i mean he just was telling me like about it like he thought it was funny himself he was like i he was like i don't i didn't want to do that but he was like i spent so much time on it that like it would have been a waste of like tons of years of like his research and he just had to pull that out well that's one thing like tom zettison like when he was figuring out how to make the light bulb it's like he figured out a lot of ways to not make the light bulb but then when you finally discover what it was it's like okay now we actually have something yeah but if your science professor who's going to remain nameless for his you know reputation if he would have come forth and said hey this is i this is what i discovered and this is not the case that could have built on like true science like hey we're actually trying to discover the truth of how the universe works but instead he's like i just don't want my my work to go away so i'm just going to kind of yeah make these assumptions and and kind of make this narrative that makes it look like i came up with something a little bit more tangible than nothing yeah and what do you think that reveals about science matt it's a lot of assumptions and theories it's a lot of assumptions and what are they doing they're actually more concerned about reputation than they are about truth right we can't rely on human integrity when we're like searching for knowledge and truth that's what i'm saying there's no morals coming from science science has nothing to do with the metaphysical oh they don't i don't i never considered science to be like more moral like focused on well that's what they try to argue because of evolution you can get all these altruism and all this like all they try to finagle their way around and produce an ethic from from uh evolution but they can't they can't get it from science which is why that happens in science because there's no there's no god to hold you accountable if you lie on your science paper but when i do something i don't just think oh i might be lying to matt i might be lying to no i might be lying to carter i think i god is watching me develop this paper and he knows the science better than i know the science and there's nothing to hold them accountable which is why who usually figures out you know over 60 percent of nobel laureates are christians 60 percent of nobel laureates so i know because christians actually have integrity and they do get science they don't just let their assumptions go they actually want to find out what's true yeah yeah i don't mean a lot of some of them are fine yeah yeah not all the more like that because i'm one more christians right it seems like science ends up backing up the christian world you anyway uh yeah i mean and a lot of aspects it does i so what um if we have time for another question i would we're just chilling dude okay i didn't know how long you wanted to make this but um just until you're done so you do you believe that like you could still believe in science as well as like still be a christian at the end of the day i'm releasing a podcast tomorrow you should listen to about that oh is it like i just recorded it today before this oh really you're talking to an engineer an engineer and an engineer also so like all of us have have scientific good job dude who understand like these are i don't know when i went through school understanding this is how i love that carter hasn't said anything for a while and now he is fully prepared to go in i like this is this is it all right here you go i was just gonna talk about like what i really enjoyed about school is learning how the world works based on just these these equations and these are some like yes these assumptions that people have made but they've tested it and shown it to be true so that we can you know it starts with the foundation and it's it's built up to a certain point to where then okay this is what's observable and this is what we can figure out and this is what we can use to figure out what's true about our world and so that's what i really enjoyed like man if if you like will exert like this force on this material in this way like it's going to behave like this being able to understand that like you can make some really cool things you can make cars go really fast and they're really fun to ride in right so yeah that's like kind of that outplay and and what happens in that aspect so like and it's because of the way that god has already structured the universe he made it in a certain way to be to be governed by laws and to be governed by certain ways and and it's confined and it just points to the fact that like there is a structure that that there is this creator god who made this structure and points to him and so being and so like you get to this point where now in our kind of postmodern world view where we have science against religion and it it's i don't know maybe you want to talk about why that's the case like why is why is there science against religion when really to me in my perspective they're totally compatible and yeah they play into each other um what uh the term that carter's talking about is the uniformity of nature that nature is completely uniform there's not a single thing that we found that is completely random and arbitrary now right now quantum mechanics looks like that but i imagine eventually we won't understand why atoms prefer one thing over the other when we can't observe it properly so again right now that's where we're at but in terms of every other field of science we have found a cause that leads something to happen a certain way although quantum mechanics looks a little fishy right now and weird so just i don't know give the time give science time to catch up but i think the reason why there is their buddy heads is i i'm literally releasing a podcast tomorrow about a book i just read by birch and russell who was in the 20th century the elite one of the leading atheist agnostic humanitarian materialists okay he's a philosopher and a mathematician at oxford and super smart but his the way he looked at why science and religion come back is because from my assessment from the book you have orthodox things that are not actually orthodox that um christians or any religious person will basically box themselves in because they are biased into something so he talks about how we have capernicus coming and saying look the earth revolves around the sun but in psalm whatever it says the earth shall never be moved therefore looks like religion is false and there's no such thing as a god but actually that is an orthodox reading of the text that has been historic because i remember the christians in the past were ignorant too of science they didn't know they couldn't observe it they didn't have a telescope yet once it's there all the catholic church starts persecuting capernicus starts persecuting galler kepler all these guys isaac newton they're persecuting they were saying no your findings are wrong because the bible says this but what the bible is actually saying is something metaphorical something poetic it's not trying to make a statement about the natural world it's just saying something more like a theological teaching that the earth god made the earth he made it very special and it's not going to be removed it's not going to be destroyed and that kind of thing and that plays in theology that like christ is redeeming the earth exactly yeah so then you actually have good christian teaching that actually makes sense of what science is is finding on top of that isn't didn't you say the psalms was just like a song that people wrote like yes you can pull tremendous truth out of it yeah no and i was about to say i i know that like the reason why it's in the bible is because it's like truth you know i mean like it's like what he wants you to hear but like again you have to know that like that is songs that people are writing you know i mean like through god and yeah it's not like um like one of the new testament books where they're like you know i mean like writing out exactly what they're trying to say or whatever you know i mean it's like and in the book he talks about christians used to think all disease was caused by demons in satan if you're sick it's because of demons got you it's not because you have a germ or whatever whatever is actually true about that which that's probably what they would think that's what i'm saying i'm like birch and russell dude if you were living in that era you would say the same thing there's kind of an arrogance there that oh we're so far past that if i was living in that era i would have saw clearly straight literally true like birch and witch right it's like yes and the witch trials thing it's like okay they know obviously christianity is true and we're living in the modern age with all this science and we think christianity is true because we think it holds water and if i was living in that time i probably would say yeah there's probably some witches out and about we need to even take care of them if we brought our technology back to that age they would they would kill us for being witches for sure exactly so you can't presume like again it's the whole thing where you say yeah it's i mean that's not guaranteed but you know it's probably it's a good guess yeah well i it's just for my like when people are very critical of nazi germany and it's like you should be it was evil but don't act like you're any better than that if you were in germany during that time with all that nationalism you would have been rooting the whole time you said yes germany's amazing let's go hitler you would have been the same dude that did that well no for sure what's going on today with the unborn children yes being killed out of them are those exactly so i don't know i think there's an arrogance there in the scientific community that we're so past that i can't believe you'd ever think that well i think the same christians you place them now which would be like we we are in engineers in science books so we're trying to make a case right now that we're those people that would have been thinking the same thing but place us here with what we know and we're still christians so again science you can do really good science as a christian you can do really good science as a non-christian and i think another i think it's so sorry you don't know that was my that was just my last one but do you see what i'm saying by that matt like you can be a christian in new science and be a non-christian in new science so what does that say about science it actually has nothing to do with religion right science is more of a method but what you see is science kind of co-opted into being a religious thing and and so i think part of it is you know like i said earlier that the that we have to answer several fundamental questions where are we from what's our purpose where are we going so i think a big one is that that that science is saying no we can explain better than christianity where we came from so we came so we have this theory of this big bang where things just kind of exploded and then all of a sudden like we we found this very highly organized planet and you know really that's hilarious that's the best i got it and it's like and that's it just exploded and that's a theory and that is the that's the orthodoxy of this like scientism religion yeah and so you kind of have to weigh that it and that's and that's kind of this false dichotomy that you have to like take it all or nothing and so it's like you're either full science or you're full religion and you like kind and all these things that go along with that like oh you homeschool your kids you're anti-vaxx yeah and and you exactly you know you're like a young earth creationist and so yeah all these kind of grouped in together and then it's just easy for us to really segment into like compartmentalize in our minds um but really it kind of does an injustice to the minds that god gave us to like seek out the truth and really try to understand it says in progress like um if you cry out for insight and call for wisdom if you if you search for as we're hidden treasure then you will find the knowledge of god it you will understand the fear of the lord and find the knowledge of god like god has given us the ability to go and like figure out like who he is and to like reveal the truth in this world yeah but i mean that's that's on us to do it it's hard it's hard it's not easy to dig for treasure i mean you gotta look where it is you don't know where it is but just keep digging and you'll and you'll eventually find it i really well said i have the that's so true i think i will say that um i do have that belief that like they both can just work like you can do both you know what i mean like yeah um but i just seen it on another podcast i've been watching it was on youtube and it was more about psychology stuff right and it's like i i feel like personally like from my viewpoint psychology is like getting more like out there like more advanced like they're like doing a lot more research on that like more instead of just like the biology bubble you know i mean like the more hard sciences and it's not like neuroscience it's psychology well yeah psychology and neuroscience too but yeah so the whole podcast there on like the brain and the mind yeah so and like um it's a couple doing it and like she made a comment about how in the comments some people were just always saying how she's like anti-religious or like when she did talk about religion she she grew up in a christian family and she's no longer christian like that's what she had told and another episode i believe and she had made some comments that they both called her out for like saying she's anti-science or she's anti-religious and like there was never a time in my like listening where i felt like she did either and i was like that's just so weird and i think it she made it like obvious that that was really like bothering her that like how could people say that and like i was like i've never like exactly encountered a problem with like science still being like you could still be a scientist and still be a christian i think that's a that's a lie our cultures bought into and i think that's a narrative that they really when i say day i just mean obviously the spiritual forces of evil they are they are very happy with you like feeling like you have to make that choice well i know based on science uh that disease is caused by germs and i know christians think it's caused by demons therefore i could never be a christian and it's like you know that they're that's satan wants you to think there's that battle there they're rubbed their button heads but like when you actually listen to scientists talk or you listen to their work you realize they're not actually butting heads with religion until they do what they make an assumption on something or they turn into science statement scientism they make a meta once you make a metaphysical statement you have left the realm of science because science only observes the material yeah yeah so once they say there's no god it's like well where are you getting that from right and i feel like we need to redefine as a culture like what religion really is because i mean a lot of the stuff going on um just just in terms of i guess our secular culture is very religious in nature because it does talk about these metaphysical questions yet if you say oh that's real you that's very religious of you to say that but i'm i'm not religious like they automatically assume like kind of just provost and or you know even catholic christianity that's what their idea of religion is and that just comes from it's just like really easy for us to compartmentalize what we believe in like how to think about things because that's just like our brain wants to do that when we encounter new ideas yeah we don't want to like restructure everything else that we've already just want to choose what to get rid of something yeah right we don't replace we don't want to like redo our hard drive just to like accept the one idea because that's a lot of hard work yeah it's really a point what do you think about that i mean yeah it sounds like yeah that wasn't very like intellectual to me to like have nothing but i'm just like there's i'm just in the same boat on for i don't have like uh yeah i wasn't undecided like i kind of had a decision already this time around i think when you came into this conversation you already were thinking yeah science and religion can both work together yeah you already thought that i just did notice had a good conversation maybe what you guys would have said or if you guys were maybe leaning on like i don't know like a three-fourths way or like no this is like how it has to be like the one or the other kind of thing so i didn't know if like that was it but i i feel like you can meet in the middle like no problem yeah i'm glad we're all relatively open-minded okay can i say one more thing just no do you have another question do you have more questions that you wanted to talk about that i'm sure i've got play in the bank but you know i mean it takes three to five business days to withdraw so uh we'll just do the xrp bro you can get that in like three to five seconds if you were just on a blockchain yeah i just uploaded your mind into the computer yeah i get what the times um i just want to say this matt think about um you know there's all this intellectual parts of it but just think about the person of jesus both what's up just think about the person of jesus like is there any other human or anybody in history that even comes close like think about gandhi and then think about christ yeah like are they actually comparable like not at all you know what i mean there's nothing that's no person nothing it's ever even come close you know so it's it's easy to get bogged down in all the little questions like what about science and what about um what about the bible like the bible says some crazy stuff how can i believe it it's like first let's start with the essentials like the person of jesus like you got to really think about what you're going to do with jesus because jesus quotes the bible he quotes all you know he quotes he gives it his affirmation so if you believe in jesus then the bible is going to be an easy thing to believe in but right now it's going to be a hard thing do what i want more thing when you're done okay well that was just my point like g i think jesus should be the foundation for a lot of these things are like what should i do with it well it's like what does jesus still hold water for me yeah jesus is the one who made the universe yeah literally owns it so he decides the rules and we're just figuring out what they are yeah yeah that makes sense yeah i i love i i notice this in the podcast too you always say does this make sense to people that are already with you you know i mean like and usually you say that to someone you're like trying to teach them but yeah you know maybe arguably you're saying it to the audience here but yeah i guess i mean i guess it gives them it gives them a second to take it in but also like did i say that in a way that made sense or did i like did i like was i saying it to like weirdly or abstractly yeah that's what that question means so sorry i know you guys are all bored it's just like did i say that correctly you know yeah no it's just i just thought that was funny yeah don't give my final all right now final final five here i go shut up so we gave i think relatively okay evidence for believing that the bible is accurate i think when it comes to the new testament people tend to not want to believe it solely because it contains miraculous things that's no reason not to believe anything i mean we can prove historically that the texas reliable like there's tons and tons of evidence we haven't even covered like half of all the solid evidence that says the new testament is solid history the problem people have with it is that it contains you know historical evidence evidence whatever records history and saying christ fed 5 000 people with five loaves of bread and three fish or that he healed people just by placing his hands on them he made the lane walk the blind sea he raised the dead he himself raised from the dead you know all these things it's like they could actually just be true like the people who wrote these things actually believe them to be true and that's the whole um you know that's the whole thing with the bible like you kind of just have to take it at its word because you can look at all these historical criteria and yeah it fulfills all of them but in the end like you still have to believe that's true like it's good to be skeptical but at a certain point you gotta plant your flag right the like the evidence is just you have to follow where it goes and yeah that's just how it is yeah and then once i think the biggest reason why i'm like asked the question to follow up on your thing right there was once you can prove even like if the old testament or if like some of the bible is true you can do like what rocky and weisbord do when you quote of the you know i mean you can use the bible to like prove the rest of it you know i mean so like even when you see these miracles it's like it's because he said this this time or it's because this happened too you know what i mean so i think that was like one of the key things i guess so i asked the question in the first place he was like yeah it'd be pretty easily believable to believe in the miracles quote unquote if the rest of it's true yeah so sorry there's one more loose end i did not tie up because you were talking about using the bible to prove the bible yeah so circular reasoning is usually a logical fallacy right except there's one time when it's not a logical fallacy and it's the only thing you can do and it's when the thing that you are talking about is authoritatively true 100% of the time at all times so yeah if you can quote something that is already true it's not circular reasoning you don't need to go to this thing to prove this thing and then it's like well if this is if this is shaky and you're using that to prove this and then this that means this is going to be shaky so the whole thing is shaky but the circular reasoning only works if this is strong and it's is literally true and cannot be strong it cannot be false so if you use that you can circular reason all you want yeah yeah i think you were trying to say that like if one point is strong like the point here is strong then the rest exactly the next point can be strong too exactly so you might i think you might have said it backwards there but you get these you get what i mean though i guess yeah there has to be a foundation for it there has to be a strong point that cannot waver if there's any assumptions or anything that's shaky whatever then obviously that's when you aren't into problems that's why outcomes razor holds because circular reasoning is tough if you yeah yeah so that that is why we can do that i think it's only because of what we're claiming about the bible that it's authoritative and 100% true but i think that's why it's important to ask like is it true yes yeah so if you because then at that point it's what you said it's just free to just be like hey we'll disprove this exactly this proves that so exactly so that should hopefully show what bryce and i really think about the bible when we when we feel like we actually can do that without without committing a logical fallacy we're like pretty confident this is this is literally 100% true oh yeah like you guys sound confident so you guys sound the part so you must be convinced yeah we're just trying to we're just trying to trick as many people as we can i don't know maybe the other listeners think different that maybe you guys are in this company i don't know yeah i don't know sounds like it to me you want me to play the outro all right let's do a live outro here we go this is good all right are you gonna do your ending bit isn't it the key what what's your little outro though three two one for the key right i don't know i'm cute shoot you do it carter for the king for the king for the king right here right here for king jesus you haven't different enough all right you have a different

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