Transcription
Like someone isn't willing to die for a lie that they know is false.
Um, I guess an example I would bring up where this is very clearly not true is legitimate.
Um, and this new scripture says that it is, um, it's like morally good to, uh, beat your wife if she talks back to you.
Would you, uh, then do that?
You're talking about the Quran.
We don't believe in that.
No, no, I'm asking you if there was a new piece of Christian scripture that had this specific moral commandment, would you then beat your wife?
What happened when a skeptic challenges Frank Turek with some of the toughest moral and philosophical questions about Christianity in this fiery exchange?
Questions like, can embarrassing details prove the gospels are true, and would Christians obey immoral commands take center stage?
Frank faces a barrage of thought-provoking hypotheticals, including whether people die for lies and how Christians discern morality.
Can Frank navigate these challenging questions while defending the Christian faith?
Join the conversation, weigh in with your thoughts in the comments, and don't miss this captivating dialogue that dives deep into faith, reason, and the moral foundations of Christianity.
Let's get started.
Yes, sir, what's your name?
Hey, my name is Jake.
Jake, go ahead, sir.
So I just got a couple questions as well as a few comments on sort of the way you're structuring the whole argument stuff here.
So you seem to be hinging pretty much, as you said, everything on the resurrection, and the proofs for the resurrection come in a few forms, mostly in like tests of different people and then the actions that these people, uh, take because of their belief.
And then you analyze this through multiple ways.
So I just would like to go through a couple of these and ask you about them and then maybe give my thoughts, as long as there's not too many, because you got a line.
By sure, I'm just going to go with two of them.
So the first one I want to bring up is the embarrassment test.
Um, you sort of refer to it in a few different ways.
You call it like the duh test in reference to how it's like very obvious, um, that you know nobody would, or like if someone would just write how they're the perfect guy or something like that.
Um, like do you think it's possible that it could have been that obvious to the people writing this story, um, that if they wrote themselves as this perfect hero, that it wouldn't be as a compelling story?
And I would point to like every other story that's ever been created ever where, uh, like we have protagonists who are imperfect, and that imperfection is what makes them, uh, like approachable and believable.
Like nobody likes, I guess I'll use like C.
It's a, I think it's a very good criticism of the embarrassing storyline of evidence if we didn't have other lines of evidence.
Sure, uh, it doesn't stand alone, I agree with you.
But we couldn't, I couldn't go through all the eyewitness testimony.
I couldn't go through the fact that it was written down early.
I couldn't go through, uh, the fact that there were undesigned coincidences in there.
I couldn't go through, uh, corroboration from external sources.
I couldn't go through the prophecies.
We didn't have time, but if you get the book, you'll see it fits.
And if you take any one piece of evidence out without the others, it's a lot weaker.
But you put it all together, you have a very strong argument.
So one more, I guess, I have two more that I want to go through super fast.
You say, um, like someone isn't willing to die for a lie that they know is false.
Um, I guess an example I would bring up where this is very clearly not true, uh, is, um, Jewish people or people harboring Jews during the Nazi regime and the Holocaust.
Um, when the Nazis came, they asked, "Hey, do you know where any Jews are? Are you sheltering any?"
People would say no and die for that because it was a lie.
Uh, and so it's very clear that people are able to die for a lie that they believe will have greater, uh, or will affect an outcome that they believe is greater.
With regard to the Jews, they're doing the right thing to protect innocent people from evil, and they were willing to take the risk in order to save those innocent people from evil.
And frankly, maybe they couldn't live with themselves if they didn't.
Okay, so that, that's not a parallel to what the New Testament writers did.
The parallel I would draw is that, um, when someone believes that, um, what they believe is correct and is or will have greater outcomes than just telling the truth or whatever, it's very clear that you can martyr yourself for a lie that you know is false.
Um, so all this shows, such as what all this shows, is that the people who wrote, um, the testimony or whatever, they believed that it was true for false reasons.
Um, or, uh, they believed that dying for that lie would give them, they believed that was the right thing to do for any given reason.
It doesn't have to be was true.
I mean, you can come up with any possibility what was in their heads.
The question is, what possible reason would all the New Testament writers or the apostles, uh, die for something that they knew was false?
Maybe that they believed that in doing so, they would, all of them, maybe some of them, maybe some others didn't.
So when you say like, um, like taking out one part of it will make something weaker, when I bring up the embarrassment, that's sort of the response I would give here, where just because I can't come up with a perfectly compelling reason why a number of people would do a specific thing doesn't make your argument more, um, or better.
Well, everybody's got to evaluate the evidence for themselves.
Yeah, but Jake, let me ask you this: if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?
Yeah, of course.
Um, obviously that, obviously I would.
Can I ask like one more question in that same vein, like a response