In this episode, the show navigates through the intricate intersections of science, philosophy, and faith. As the discussion unfolds, listeners are guided through different proofs of God’s existence, exploring their relevance and persuasiveness in modern discourse. The hosts offer a critique of Charlie Kirk’s approach while providing their own insights into the age-old debate between evolution and intelligent design. A compelling narrative emerges, examining the philosophical underpinnings of belief systems and their practical implications for society today.
So out of all those proofs of God, what if any of them are persuasive to you? None. None.
SPEAKER 03 :
Seriously? Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
Scholars can’t explain it all away.
SPEAKER 1 :
Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God. Tune in to Real Science Radio.
SPEAKER 05 :
Turn up the Real Science Radio. Keeping it real.
SPEAKER 03 :
Today we’re diving into Charlie Kirk’s recent viral debate with an atheist challenger. It got about 300,000 views in just a month’s time. So we’re going to armchair quarterback this thing. And while Charlie overall did a really good job, there are some areas that we thought were a little off that we’d like to clear up and hopefully strengthen.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. Hey, thanks for inviting me in, Fred. I heard about the video. I can’t wait to go through it with you. Let’s jump right in.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, here we go. I’ve been watching your videos for a long time. Been a big fan of yours. One thing I will say is that I have come out here not only because I turned conservative in about 2016 with Trump’s first run. I’ve always also been a devout atheist. Devout atheist.
SPEAKER 03 :
Can you be a devout atheist?
SPEAKER 04 :
I mean, that is an oxymoron. Well, I suppose you could be, Fred, but it would be something that someone else would point out if you’re devout. It’s just not good form to call yourself devout. Okay.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Well, let’s continue rolling the tape.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’ve been proud in my belief with that. I find the book, the Bible, to be a very fictitious book. I find that it has a lot of contradictions that are not squared away by anybody that finds it, that reads it. So I just want to know, one thing I want to get for you before we dive into that is, how can we get more people of different faiths to come to the conservative movement instead of, because a lot of what I see of you is, espousing on Christian virtues and Jewish, but I think that there could be a lot more that we could do with ideas rather than the beliefs of religion.
SPEAKER 01 :
Let’s start with the idea of atheism, if that’s okay. I’m going to go through all of the arguments for God’s existence.
SPEAKER 04 :
Stop the tape, Fred. Kudos to Charlie Kirk. I love the fact that he didn’t take the kid’s bait. to talk about how do we bring more atheists into the conservative movement. It seems like Charlie Kirk knows instinctively that an atheist can’t be a conservative. To conserve means to conserve that which came before. And atheism is an absence of belief. It’s just emptiness. How do you conserve emptiness? You can’t. So I love the fact that Charlie Kirk just completely ignores that and jumps right into, hey, let’s talk about evidence for God. Exactly.
SPEAKER 03 :
And the atheist mentioned, you know, let’s bring together all faiths. So in a way, he’s admitting that they have a faith. He has a faith. It’s a blind faith. But anyways, yeah, I agree. I love how Charlie jumps right in to the evidence. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER 04 :
And real quick, just not to criticize the kid too much, because he’s obviously pretty nervous. Exactly, yeah. But he says the Bible is very fictitious.
SPEAKER 02 :
Very fictitious?
SPEAKER 03 :
Instead of fictitious, it’s very, very fictitious.
SPEAKER 04 :
And so when he says very fictitious and lots of contradictions, he could just say the Bible is fictitious, and contradictory. But he uses extra words to cover up for his insecurity and his uncertainty over the fact of whether or not the Bible is true or not. And you can tell by the extra words he adds in.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and one of these days, Doug, we’ll have to do a top 10 shows on alleged Bible contradictions. I’ve heard them all through the years. I’m sure you’ve heard all kinds of different ones, and there are no real contradictions, but that’s for another show. So let’s go ahead. Okay, we’ll put that on the master list, Fred. Let’s do it. Okay, let’s roll the tape.
SPEAKER 01 :
Tell me if you’ve heard them before or if they are compelling. First is what’s called the ontological argument for God, which ontos comes from the Greek, it’s the Greek word for being. So the highest conception of human beings, we can only conceptualize that which is real. And so the highest conception of our own combined wisdom is God. I think this is the weakest argument for God, to be perfectly honest. I’ll go with you there, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
So, Doug, what do you think of the ontological argument? I don’t personally use it. I don’t think it’s a powerful argument, but it is. I like how Charlie’s kind of going through the steps. It sounds like he has a strategy on how to answer atheists.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, definitely, and the ontological portion of the program. I don’t understand what he just said, that we can only conceptualize that which is real. The Bible says the imagination of a man’s heart is evil from his youth, and it seems like we can imagine all kinds of unreal things, but maybe I’m wrong. I’m not a psychologist, but yeah, it seems pretty weak. Yeah, more philosophy than anything. Okay, roll the tape.
SPEAKER 01 :
It is a proof, an ontological view of God. The second of which is called the cosmological view of God, coming from the Greek word cosmos, which means all-encompassing creation. If you look around with creation, there are 15 fine-tuned measurements that if anyone went off by a micron, our entire existence would not exist. The tilt of the earth, our proximity to the sun, our configuration of oxygen to carbon dioxide. In fact, we can look at the probability of our existence. It’s one in multiple trillions that all of this would come together at an exact time, let alone consciousness, let alone human beings, let alone our DNA.
SPEAKER 02 :
Sure. I want to counter that with the fact that there are millions upon millions of galaxies with millions upon millions of their own stars, with millions upon millions of their own planets. I don’t think that if this Earth was not in this exact space as it exists now, I think that that is also not compelling because we would have found existence in another location in the universe if it was not just in this space.
SPEAKER 01 :
I don’t have enough faith to believe that, but let me continue on.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, so, Doug, I do love his teleological arguments. Charlie actually, you know, just by mistake, it’s always easy to aren’t your quarterback, but that wasn’t the cosmological argument. It was a teleological argument. He got right to design, which is great because that’s – You know, my favorite area to go when debating an atheist or an unbeliever is, you know, the evidence for God. I mean, it’s right out of the Bible, Romans 1. You know, the invisible attributes are clearly seen by the things that are made. So the Apostle Paul himself appeals to design, the creation. That’s right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and he says that the creation leaves all men without excuse. That’s right. Okay, and so real quick, Fred, because I know that because we’re a science show, we assume people know things, and I understand that I know very little. Ontology is the study of the nature of being, especially in regard to human beings. And then Charlie just mentioned cosmology. That’s the study of that which exists. especially regarding origins and the heavenly bodies. And now we’re going to get to teleology. An explanation deduced by the examination of purpose, right? We’re going to talk about the teleological view. And, well, let’s roll the tape.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yep, and just real quick, it sounded like the atheist was appealing to the anthropic principle. He didn’t do a great job of it, but that’s where he was trying to go with that.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, well, Charlie pointed out that the odds of all the fine-tuning are in the one in the trillions i think it’s probably more in the one in the hundreds of trillions maybe yeah many of them are absolutely and so the but the kid says like so many college professors say well the fact that it all came together means that it did Yeah, exactly. And there you go. And it would have somewhere, obviously, because it did.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. And if I had to add anything to Charlie Kirk’s arguments would be the quantized redshifts imply that we are the center of the universe, the axis of evil. The differences in temperatures on one side of the earth compared to the other, and it just spans the whole universe. And they call it the axis of evil. They have not solved that problem. So there’s a lot of things you can appeal to here, but Charlie’s doing a great job up to this point.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, he’s only got a little bit of time with this kid.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. It’s pretty much eight minutes with this guy. So, okay, here we go.
SPEAKER 01 :
Then there is what’s called the teleological argument for God. That comes from the Greek word telos, which means, we get the word telescope, it means goal, destination, or purpose. This here goes to an argument that for every cause, for every effect, there must be a cause.
SPEAKER 03 :
And that’s the cosmological principle. So he just got them backwards. But we’re definitely giving him a pass there. Because remember, Doug, I said prokaryote in place of eukaryote. I got those reversed. That’s right. Yeah, it was a slip of the tongue.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, he has both concepts correct in his mind. He just got the nomenclature backwards. That’s right.
SPEAKER 01 :
So, for example, we can agree that space, time, and matter exist. We agree. Therefore, definitionally, something that is outside of space, time, and matter must have made space, time, and matter exist.
SPEAKER 02 :
Not necessarily.
SPEAKER 01 :
Then it’s against the laws of reason.
SPEAKER 03 :
So this is an area of the debate, Doug, where we would take issue with one of the things that Charlie Kirk said. We don’t think that God created time. And in fact, you’ll hear Charlie reference Einstein a little bit later. We’ve got shows coming up that are gonna talk about special relativity and whatnot, but this whole idea that God is outside of time I think there’s a pretty good case that that originated with Greek pagan philosophy. You can go to rsr.org slash time. And I realize with our Christian brothers, not everybody agrees with us on this, but nowhere in the Bible does it say God created time itself. And in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It didn’t say he created time. Time is just the passing of one moment to the next. So anyways, I think there’s 20th century reliance on Einstein, his concept slipping into the Bible. I think this is an example of it. And we’ll address it further.
SPEAKER 04 :
Roll tape.
SPEAKER 02 :
Because there could always be a universe that existed before our Big Bang. We could have existed with space, but no matter, in a very tiny point. That’s what basically the Big Bang was. So I don’t see how that disproves atheism. It’s more…
SPEAKER 01 :
atheism is more of a i don’t believe god exists why is this compelling well i’m going to go through two more proofs of god and then we’ll finish then there’s what’s called the column proof of time which is according thanks to albert einstein we know that time uh is actually a real thing that can be traversed with enough speed and in order for time to exist something timeless must have created it finally there’s something called the axiological view of god i don’t know if
SPEAKER 03 :
So any more comments on that dog before we get in the axiological view?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. Well, you mentioned earlier that this idea of time being a physical thing creeped in from Greek mythology and then atheistic physics. And now for Charlie to refer to the column. The column, by the way, is medieval Islamic scholasticism. And it’s not unreasonable. It says that everything that began to exist, must have a cause. It’s not unreasonable. But we don’t have to refer to medieval Islamic scholasticism to establish that. The Bible establishes that, and I just don’t appreciate that Charlie referred to Islamic scholasticism, but I think that goes back to Charlie’s working off a formula that he got from someone who went to college, and he should probably just stick more with the Bible.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. And to be fair, most Christians probably believe in the whole Einstein, God outside of time, that time’s physical, that you can time. I just saw the other day, we saw Interstellar. Don’t recommend it. It was boring. It was stupid. Matthew McConaughey was the main actor, but you know, he, somehow they’re going out way into space because he travels faster than the speed of light clock slowed down for him or time does. So when he finally makes it back to earth, his daughter is old and on her deathbed. It’s so stupid, but that’s, we’ll, we’ll have future shows to, to get more into that. Um,
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, it sounds like it makes for good fiction, but maybe not in the case of that particular movie.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and if you watch that movie and you believe Einstein and special relativity, then you have to believe that that’s actually real. Matthew McConaughey didn’t age compared to his daughter, who’s on her deathbed. He’s still 40 years old. It’s just silly.
SPEAKER 04 :
And most people believe that that is… Possible.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and I’ve got some heavenly bets with people. We’ll see when we get to heaven who’s right on the whole time is relative. Oh, yeah, we’re going to be settling up a lot of bets. Yeah, I get extra time in some people’s mansions if I win that one. Now, I realize I could lose, but hey, I’m pretty confident in that one, but we’ll see.
SPEAKER 01 :
okay let’s roll the tape if you know this one axios comes from the word uh the greek word judgment um axios and judgment mean the same thing which basically means that every human being has some form of right and wrong embedded in us uh for example when the nuremberg trials were happening the nazis were not able to say well it was just the laws of the land they actually appealed to a higher power saying that every one of us had some good or evil within us
SPEAKER 02 :
I mean, that kind of disproves, right? I mean, if the Nazis were able to point to something outside of themselves and say, hey, this is the reason why we’re doing this. They didn’t.
SPEAKER 01 :
No, the point is the Nazis didn’t. It’s that the people doing the trial did, meaning the Nazis were not able to excuse that. So out of all those proofs of God, what if any of them are persuasive to you? None.
SPEAKER 04 :
None. Okay. All right. So real quick, Fred, just one more definition, axiology. Charlie mentioned the axological view. Axiology is the study of value, especially ethical, moral, and aesthetic value, and it basically asserts that our conscience proves God, which again, it’s another biblical principle that Charlie refers to, which is great.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yep. I want to play a clip from Get Out of the Matrix. Remember that one? Oh, yeah. Because Bob uses the axiological argument, and it’s super interesting, and you’ll see some real just startling admissions by these atheists. I’m going to go ahead and play just a clip of this.
SPEAKER 06 :
See, if you’re going to build your life on a set of ideas, make them stable enough so they cannot be destroyed within eight seconds. If someone tells you that you can only know that which you can learn with your five senses. Ask them, which of your five senses have told you that? Is it your sense of taste? Did that tell you that you could only know what your five senses can tell you? For me, that doesn’t pass the think test. I could smell a fish in that line, that you could only know what your five senses tell you. It turns out that you can know a lot. beyond your five senses. For the young women in the room that hope one day to be married, not all women want to be married, but some do. Some few do. And if a woman, before she commits herself to a man for life, she wants to know if he loves her. And what if you’ve been taught that you can only know based on your five senses? How are you going to figure out if this guy loves you? Maybe that’s not an important decision anymore. But are you going to feel it? With your fingertips? Are you going to taste them and find out if he loves you? See, when you believe a lot, when you’re caught in the matrix, when you’ve been taught not to think for yourself, but to believe absurdities, it’s not just your view on God that will be destroyed. It’s your life and your family.
SPEAKER 03 :
Wow, that’s powerful stuff. And I recommend that video. It’s called Get Out of the Matrix by Bob Enyart. And the video starts with… He asks this table in the cafeteria, you know, is it absolutely wrong to rape a woman? And this girl says… No, it’s not absolutely wrong because she’s convinced that there’s no absolute. So they have to answer that way. And it’s just amazing what the public education has done. And Charlie will get into this whole thing later. But it just reminded me of that debate, this whole axiological argument as well.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and this was around, this is early 2000s, 20 years ago, maybe a little more now. Yeah. And it’s interesting to see that the kids in the school were obviously already being brainwashed toward a relativistic worldview and that there are no absolutes. But 20, 25 years ago, the school allowed someone with a differing viewpoint to actually go into the school and talk to the kids. That’s probably not been true for at least 10 years, I would assume. So it would be so interesting to follow up with the kids who were in that classroom and heard that lecture from Bob Enyart and how many of them were at least saved from a life of misery and confusion, if not saved from hell itself.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and what a great point of how it destroys yourself and your family. This isn’t just about anger at God. Okay, let’s roll the tape. Back to the debate.
SPEAKER 01 :
None. Okay. So then, if you look at a human being, and you look at the improbability of how we are put together, do you believe that we are largely an accident of multi-billions of years of evolution?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. How do we not know that there isn’t something that’s identical to us on another planet somewhere that we haven’t… encountered yet. It’s just a skeptic in me that’s thinking that way, that says, hey, maybe there’s something out there that we haven’t contacted yet that is in another galaxy or another planet or something that we just don’t know about.
SPEAKER 01 :
Or maybe there isn’t. So the improbability, though, of our existence and the Earth and oxygen and carbon and nitrogen and all of it together, you don’t marvel at a human being being able to heal itself when it’s cut or grow to a… No, because we’re not the only beings on Earth that can do that. There’s a lot of people… Well, we are the only ones that can reason, though. So…
SPEAKER 03 :
Did you catch what happened there, Doug?
SPEAKER 04 :
Help me through it, Fred. There’s so much there.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, so the atheist challenges Kirk’s position on just the design of people, and then he appeals design in nature. Well, it happens in nature. Okay, well, then that’s design. I don’t get how that’s, you know.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s yet another layer for Charlie’s argument, right?
SPEAKER 1 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
and he doesn’t see that yep you know what it is fred he’s mostly looking for something from another planet or another dimension that we haven’t yet discovered that’s gonna let him off the hook that’s mostly what he’s looking for so that’s missing the forest for the trees and literally not realizing that the trees can heal themselves and that’s pretty impressive and that’s more of an argument for Charlie’s position.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yep, exactly. So, okay. Let’s go ahead and keep the tape rolling.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay. Do you marvel at our capacity to reason? Even the ability for mammals or reptiles to reproduce life, you don’t see any intelligent design behind it. No, none.
SPEAKER 02 :
You just see it as a… It’s a consequence of natural selection and evolution over millions and probably millions of years.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, so I had to stop it there. I mean, this is tough. So… You know, this is the Bible talking.
SPEAKER 04 :
Warning, warning, warning, Real Robinson. There are Bible verses up ahead for those in the audience who advocate pluralism and diversity. We know here at Real Science Radio that you would like to censor anyone who will ever quote a Bible verse in public. So this warning gives you fair notice. Raw and adulterated truth is about to be uttered.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, so he says there’s none, no evidence. So Psalm 14… It pulls no punches, which it says, the fool tells himself there is no God, but reality says otherwise. And you know, it repeats this in Psalm 53, verse 1. So I do like the axiological argument here or the morality argument. Remember that our friend at the homeschool conference last year, Doug, he used the axiological argument. is one of the go-to arguments he uses. Where do we get our moral standard from? It’s really good stuff. And speaking of homeschool conference, we’re going to be at the Colorado Homeschool Conference in Denver on June 12th through 14th. So if you’re in the area, we’re going to have a booth set up. So please stop by and say hi. We’re looking forward to that. We’ve actually got a few guests that are going to come on our show in the next couple weeks probably that are going to also be at the conference. So that should be really good. That’ll be a hoot. Yep. June 12th through the 14th. That’s right. And Doug, you’re going to be there too with one of your daughters. That’s going to be awesome. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. So this might be a good time to break into the interesting fact of the week. Oh boy, I’ve been on the edge of my seat. And I, so I’ve got two here and I’m going to let you choose the theme that you want. Do you want me to ask you about animals that can also regenerate limbs, or do you want me to ask one related to the five senses?
SPEAKER 04 :
Hmm. So either one limits the possibilities, but the five senses seems to limit it the most, giving me the best chance of being correct. So I’m going to go for the five senses.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. Here we go. So the interesting fact of the week. Beyond the traditional five senses, scientists recognize several more. One of them is called nociception. What sense does nociception refer to? Nociception. Yeah, and it’s spelled N-O-C-I-C-E-P-T-I-O-N, so nociception.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, N-O-C-I, not G-N-O. Yeah, nociception. Nociception is the sense that you’re being watched.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s the sense of pain.
SPEAKER 04 :
Pain, yeah. Oh, that gets back to another axiom Bob Enyart left us with, that pain is not physical.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and Doug, you know, I just checked, and you can go to rsr.org slash pain, and Bob has a whole page there on pain is not physical. That was a show we did back in October of 2006. So almost two decades ago, if you want to look into that, that was a, you know, I remember that from years ago. I don’t remember the details, of course, but yeah, it’s an interesting thing. So, all right, Doug.
SPEAKER 04 :
I remember him going into what hurts more, breaking your leg or losing your child in a car accident, which hurts more. And that really drives the point home that pain’s not physical and… Yeah. Yeah. Yep. RSR.org slash pain.
SPEAKER 03 :
Check it out. All right. So let’s continue the tape.
SPEAKER 01 :
So we both have faith. Okay. I would argue you have a lot more faith than I do. You have a lot more blind faith to believe that everything around you, love, joy, peace, sadness, is all just a construct of neurons firing in your brain. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So do you believe that we are just limited to our five senses?
SPEAKER 02 :
No, I think even science has said that there could be like a sixth sense of… What is that sixth sense? Like a sixth sense that could be aware of what’s surrounding the body. Like I can know that there’s another person next to me or there’s a microphone in front of me. I can sense that. I don’t need to have my eyes… I could be blind and I could still know that that was there. I mean, I didn’t need… I use more than five senses. Science has told us that for decades. What do you think happens when you die? Nothing. Nothing.
SPEAKER 01 :
Our electronic impulses just stop firing and… Let me ask you the most important question. Do you hope you’re wrong?
SPEAKER 02 :
Not really.
SPEAKER 01 :
No, I mean, I’ve got this… So you don’t desire an afterlife?
SPEAKER 02 :
I consider this life as an atheist more compelling than even when I was younger and when I was religious because I think that this is the only life we have. We need to do with it what we can, the best that we can do it, and and this like i said it’s just the one chance we got we don’t have an afterlife we don’t have anything after that so our goal is to do become the best people that we can possibly be in that one chance that we get okay i will be stunned so you hope that there’s no eternal judgment and you never see your loved ones after you die
SPEAKER 01 :
No, not really. I just want to, I hope you all internalize just how dark that is, how sad that is. And it’s fine, I’m not trying to criticize you. We as Christians have hope that we are going to see our loved ones again, and that we will be in heaven, and that we will be in perfect peace, and that this is not it. In fact, there’s something even better awaiting us. So I hope one day that you do seek to find something higher and better, that this is not all for us in our existence. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay.
SPEAKER 04 :
So I got several things, Fred. All right. First of all, Charlie, you should not present faith as if it’s allowed to be unreasonable. Atheism, you have to allow them to be unreasonable. But that’s not faith. That’s irrationality. Faith is not allowed to be unreasonable. And to present his faith as if he has more faith than you have faith, I just think that’s a bad argument. He doesn’t have any faith. We have faith that’s reasonable. So that’s the first thing.
SPEAKER 03 :
If he has faith, like Charlie did say, it’s blind. But that’s not the Bible definition of faith. Doug, as we all know, it’s from Hebrews 11, verse 1. Yeah. Faith is the evidence of things not seen. You know, the faith isn’t a blind faith. You know, Webster’s likes to define it as something, belief in something for which there is no evidence. I mean, that’s right out of Webster’s. But that’s not what faith is. No, no, no. The evidence of things not seen. And I thought Charlie missed another opportunity here. And again, it’s easy to armchair quarterback.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, we’re running out of time in this broadcast, so go to our website to catch the rest of this program, realsignsradio.com.
SPEAKER 05 :
Intelligent Design and DNA. Can’t explain it all away Get ready to be awed By the handiwork of God Tune into Real Science Radio Turn up the Real Science Radio Keepin’ it real That’s what I’m talkin’ about
In this episode, the show navigates through the intricate intersections of science, philosophy, and faith. As the discussion unfolds, listeners are guided through different proofs of God’s existence, exploring their relevance and persuasiveness in modern discourse. The hosts offer a critique of Charlie Kirk’s approach while providing their own insights into the age-old debate between evolution and intelligent design. A compelling narrative emerges, examining the philosophical underpinnings of belief systems and their practical implications for society today.
