Transcription
Popular YouTuber Rhett Mclofflin recently shared why he left Christianity with Alex Okconor, the cosmic skeptic. I was kind of like, okay, I don't, I just don't believe this at all. I'm not going to call myself a Christian.
At the time we're recording this, it has well over 2 million views and has created quite the conversation and stir online. Given that Rhett raises some apologetics questions, why would the disciples die for a lie? Doesn't that kind of make God an…? Why did these people write this? Where did this idea come from? I thought, you know what? If Bill is available to come on and respond with me to this, this would be perfect.
So, Dr. Craig, there's a combination here, I think, of important lessons for the church and apologists, as well as a few points that I think it'd be helpful for people if we offer our responses. So, are you ready to look at 10 clips together and give me your reaction?
I certainly am. I, I'm looking forward to interacting with Rhett on these questions.
Perfect. Well, let's take a look at the first clip. Certainty is a really important aspect of religious faith and especially Christianity and especially evangelical Christianity because I think that agreeing with a set of propositional statements is actually what—when if you ask somebody to describe, they might say, well, it's about a relationship with Jesus, but if like, well, yeah, but what does that mean? It—these propositional statements come up. It's like, well, I believe this about Jesus. If, if any church worth its salt has a “we believe” place on their website, right?
Mhm.
That's what I thought, right? And so I think that being certain and being right about these things comes at a premium. It is really, really important. So I thought that being certain was very important. Here's really the question, Bill. How central is certainty in the church today? And how important should it be for Christians?
I think that being certain is not important, Sean. I think what's important is to know these truths. But certainty is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge. Uh, in the first place, certainty is not necessary for knowledge because we can know things on the basis of probabilistic evidence. Indeed, this is the way we know anything in history. For example, neither is certainty sufficient for knowledge because some are terribly, terribly certain—are desperately wrong. Certainty is a psychological property that is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge. And so I, I think that it's simply a mistake to, um, prize certainty as something that's really important in the Christian life.
That's a really helpful distinction. I have a lot of sympathy with Rhett for this because I think there's a huge segment of the evangelical church that basically considers faith equivalent to certainty. And this can be devastating to faith. I wrote a whole book on deconstruction. I've had countless conversations with people who've deconstructed, deconverted their faith, and this theme comes up regularly. And I'm, I'm grateful that I had a dad who invited questions, who was okay with doubt, wanted conversation with me, but also people like JP Morland who made a distinction when I was at Biola as an undergrad going through a faith crisis. And he made the distinction that belief is not the same thing as certainty. That belief is to hold something with varying degrees of confidence. You can believe something 51% or you can believe it 99%. They're both beliefs—different psychological confidence, like you said, whereas certainty is a psychological state of having no doubt—being 100% confident something is true—and I think when we do this in people's minds, then they associate doubt with unbelief, or as I would say, or lack of knowledge, or yeah, exactly. This is, uh, important to emphasize for our viewers that the point we're making here is not a theological point, uh, that springs out of commitment to the Christian faith. This is a philosophical point that the nature of knowledge, uh, does not require or imply psychological certainty. And I think biblically too, Jude 1:22 says, "Have mercy on those who doubt." They're not unbelievers. They are people who believe and have faith and yet have doubt. So I think we actually discourage people to go deeper in their faith when we equate belief with certainty. It's an impossible standard. And so I resonate with Rhett's concern here, but also want to make the distinction that you made, which I think is really, really helpful.
Let's take a look at the second clip. I can agree that God pre-ordained a certain number of people to be his children, which definitely means that a certain number of people are not predestined to be his children. In fact, statistically speaking, the majority of people who've ever lived and live right now—and they're going to be in hell. So, I believe that because the Bible says it, but—and I like paused because I was a little bit nervous. I was like, "But doesn't that kind of make God an…?" And they were like, "No, no, no. He's just like, you don't, you can't understand. First of all, we all deserve to be in hell. The fact that he would save—he's justified in not saving anyone." Yeah, that's the line, isn't it? And so then I was like, "Yeah, but he decided to create a world in which these beings would exist." Like, he still made that choice. Doesn't that still kind of make him an…? So, I was having thoughts like that at like 20 years old, but was able to continue to carry like a cognitive dissonance that allowed me to still be a very strong Christian and just be like, "Okay, there are things that I don't understand. God's got that figured out." That'll be the first question I ask him when I get to heaven.
Essentially, here's the question, Bill. Is God morally reprehensible for creating a world in which most people will not believe in him? And how can Christians live with cognitive dissonance of this kind?
Well, I have to say that I don't agree with Rhett that people are unilaterally pre-ordained to salvation or damnation by God. Uh, I don't think that the Bible teaches that at all. Um, what the Bible teaches is that election is primarily a corporate notion and only secondarily an individual notion. So, for example, in the Old Testament the object of God's election was not individual persons. It was a people. It was a nation—the nation of Israel. And God said, "You are my chosen people, and I will bless you and give you a posterity in a land." Now, those promises to the corporate group, uh, Israel were not guaranteed to every individual person in Israel. Those persons could fail to live up to the demands of the covenant; they could rebel against God and, uh, be, uh, unbelievers. For example, the—we know the story of the people of Israel who had Aaron, the brother of Moses, build them a, a golden calf, and they worshiped and served the golden calf rather than the God of the Bible. And as a result, God's judgment, uh, was incurred by them. So, a member of the corporate group isn't any sort of guarantee of salvation. Now you move that into the New Testament. And who is the corporate group that is elect in the New Testament? Well, in the New Testament, God expands this corporate people to include Gentiles as well as Jews. And so he says, "Those who were not my people, I now call my people." But again, not every Gentile or every Jew is an heir of salvation. Rather, it is those who place their faith in Christ Jesus who become the heirs of these promises. So, election isn't God's picking out Susan or Paul or John to be saved and choosing to damn Billy and, uh, Karen and others to, to hell. Not at all. Rather, what God says is I want, uh, everyone to be saved. And he gives sufficient grace for salvation to every person that he creates. And then he leaves it up to us whether or not we want to align ourselves with that elect body of people or not. So our salvation lies in our own hands, and God is not to be blamed for, uh, unbelief or judgment. I don't think that these sorts of things are unilaterally pre-ordained in the way that Rhett must have been taught.
That's a great distinction. A couple things jump to my mind. I think, you know, in some ways the critique of hell is understandable emotionally. I don't like it. I have loved ones who don't believe in God. I would be completely lying if I didn't say it bothered me. But, of course, two questions come to mind. Number one, when we critique hell as being unjust, that assumes that humans have value and ought not be treated this way; and there's a standard by which we can critique God. I want to flip the scenario around and say, where does that standard come from? If there is no God, that doesn't answer it, but to me helps place the question in terms of really philosophically explaining human value and where right and wrong come from. The other thing, and this is a big piece to me, but why believe in something like hell when it's all said and done, I'm convinced because I think Jesus taught it. And if Jesus lived a, a sinless life, did miracles, gave us the most profound or some of the most profound moral teachings, and rose from the grave, there is a certain authority there to speak on these matters, whether we like it or not. That's why the central question, I think, is the identity of Jesus.
Yes.
I don't think in one sense God sends anybody to hell. Uh, rather people send themselves by irrevocably and freely separating themselves from God forever. But I took it that Rhett's objection was that people's fate is pre-ordained or predestined by God. And I, I just disagree with that. That's not the way I read the, the Bible.
All right, good take. Let's move to clip number three. Jesse, my wife, who did come from like a young earth creationist background, like that's, you know, that's what she was taught growing up. When I came home and I was like, we need to talk about something. And I, and I said, I am thoroughly convinced that evolution is true and that we are related to every other animal. I believe in common ancestry and I just think that it is not just—I sort of think it's true. It's just like my reading has led me to think that if this isn't true then I actually can't determine what any—anything that's true. It's so overwhelming because, I'd read, in addition—additionally to that. She just starts crying because this represented—she knew what this represented, right? This was this seismic shift. And I think a lot of people that I tell this story to are like, "What do you mean? What? There's all these Christians that believe in evolution. Like, I, I can't believe that this was so significant for you." But I think the reason it was is because at that point I realized how wrong I could be about something so fundamental. Yeah. And I never ever considered that I might be wrong about something so fundamental. And then not only was I wrong, but all of these Christian apologists who were so sure about their critiques of evolution, they had missed the boat so significantly on this that suddenly I was like, can I, can I trust anything else they've got to say about this? So that was the first big domino.
Yeah.
Essentially, here's the question. How big of a domino in one's faith is evolution? And what lessons should Christian apologists learn from Rhett's experience?
I think that the evidence in favor of common ancestry is good, especially the evidence of microbiology. But the question of common descent is not a fundamental tenant of the Christian faith. It is tangential, and therefore one can easily change one's mind about this, as many people do. And I think very helpful here is the philosopher, uh, WVO Quine's notion of a web of beliefs. Quine points out that all of our beliefs are, are not on the same level. Rather, our beliefs are like a web, a spider's web, where you have certain beliefs that are deeply ingrained, very close to the center of the web, and then gradually radiate to the circumference of the web. And beliefs that are deeply ingrained near the center of the web are more, uh, fundamental. And if they are given up, then there are repercussions that reverberate throughout the web of beliefs. But if you pluck out a strand that's nearer the circumference, then it won't have the same sort of repercussions as if you were to remove one of those central beliefs. And my point is that your views about common ancestry are in no way part of the core of one's beliefs. It's tangential and therefore easily, uh, changed. Now I think the difficulty is that certain young earth creationists, like apparently Rhett himself at one time, have a distorted understanding of the web of beliefs. They think that right at the center of the web is, um, belief in special young earth creationism. And therefore, if that's given up, it has enormous repercussions throughout the web of belief. I, I think this is nowhere better epitomized than in a poster that I saw a few years ago, which showed two little islands with towers built on these little islands. And then the people in the towers were lobbing cannonballs back and forth at each other. And one island was labeled creation and the other island was labeled evolution. And the towers that were built on these islands were labeled Christianity and atheism. And as I looked at this, I thought this is completely upside down. Um, atheism is not built upon the theory of evolution, and Christianity is not built upon the foundation of special creationism. If anything, it's exactly the reverse. It, it would be reversed. It would be that if you are an atheist, then you have to be an evolutionist, or if you were a Christian, then you would believe in, in creation. But you see how twisted, how upside down those theological priorities were. And someone who has that sort of system of beliefs, apparently as Rhett did, is going to find the abandonment of young earth creationism to be incredibly disruptive and personally shattering.
Bill, I personally assess the genetic evidence for common descent a little bit differently, which is not the issue, we're, we're discussing or obviously debating here. But I think you're right. The core issue is can naturalism itself, a naturalistic mechanism account for all the complexity and diversity of life. That's where I think the question of common descent is very different than the kind of concern we would have for a purely naturalistic process of evolution. Now, of course, this raises important theological and biblical questions we're not getting to right now. But one thing that I say to my students is specifically, I'll say, look, and these are my students at Biola, even if evolution were true, it can't explain some of the most important worldview questions that every belief system needs to explain. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is the universe fine-tuned? The origin of life, origin of morality, origin of consciousness, applicability of math, near-death experiences. None of evolution alone would explain any of those things. So, it's such a small pinnacle in what a worldview needs to explain.
All right, let's move to clip number four. There was never, um, I think that there was, especially in those days, in the college days, there was zero curiosity, right, about whether or not I might be wrong. Yeah. You know, that wasn't even up for debate. There was no, there was full confidence and no curiosity.
Mhm.
Um, and I am in a very, a very different place. I think those two things have reversed at this point in my life.
Right.
Right. Very low confidence in my perspective and high curiosity for all of this stuff.
Really the question here is how do you balance confidence and curiosity about your faith?
Yeah, I've got to say that I am also amazed, uh, as Rhett is at people's lack of curiosity, uh, about things. Some people have no interest at all in how the universe began or in the mystery of the applicability of mathematics to physical phenomena or to the basis for objective moral values and duties or the reality of the soul. And I, I just find it incredible that people can be so incurious and so apathetic about these deep questions. And so I find among unbelievers a great deal of incuriosity about these important things. The older I get, the more confident I am that Christianity is true and the more curious I am about what others believe and why they believe it. My confidence comes from studying this for a lifetime, but also just living it out, understanding my shortcomings, the beauty of grace. Like, I think there's a way, humanly speaking, to be confident, not certain, and be curious and a, and willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads. And I think we're fooling ourselves that we can just be curious and not confident, confident, not curious. The key is to kind of ground both. And I think there's practically a way to do this.
Let's move on to the next clip. It was one aspect of that argument, of that case, you know, probably the most famous one is, well, why would the disciples die for a lie?
Mhm.
And then when I really looked into that and then I found that, well, I don't think I can actually historically defend that anyone died for something that they knew to be a lie. Like, I think that this can be explained by them being deceived, right? They could just be wrong about what they saw or their perspective. But I think the bigger picture was as I started looking at different perspectives on the historical Jesus. Is it reasonable the disciples were simply wrong for what they claimed to have seen about the risen Jesus? Could they have been deceived and then, you know, willing to die for something that was false?
I was surprised at what Rhett said here. No one died, he says, for what they knew to be a lie. Well, that's exactly the point. Uh, they died or were willing to die for what they believed to be the truth. No one would die for what he knew to be a lie. So what that implies is that the disciples were either deceivers or deceived.
Mhm.
This is the classic dilemma that apologists for, uh, Jesus posed. Were the disciples deceivers or were they deceived? Now, if they weren't deceivers, then what hypothesis would appeal to their being sincerely mistaken about Jesus' resurrection? Well, it's pretty hard to think of one, Sean. Uh, the only ones I can think of would be the wrong tomb hypothesis of Kirop Lake, which generated no following, or it would be the hallucination hypothesis that is still debated today. And so one would need to examine whether or not the resurrection appearances could have been explained as, uh, hallucinations that the disciples mistook for appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.
That's a great take. I think deceivers or deceived is a good way to look at it.
Well, the problem is even if the disciples were deceived, you still have the conversion of James. You still have the conversion of Paul and the evidence for the empty tomb that are all going to require some explanation. That's where the disciples being deceived alone is not going to get us there.
All right, the next clip. It began to dawn on me that I don't know exactly what happened with Jesus. I don't know the nature of his—specifically the nature of his death. Like, was he left on the cross? Was he thrown into a large, you know, like mass grave? Was he, was he put into a, a rich man's grave by Joseph of Arimathea? Was that invented? I, I don't know. But what seems to be pretty clear to me is that it's almost certain that there's some explanation for how it all started that isn't that he actually raised from the dead. In my, in my compulsion to believe that he raised from the dead, it is a religious position. It is a faith position. It's not an historically defensible position to the degree that these Christian apologists make it out to be.
Is there good reason to doubt the crucifixion and burial of Jesus? And to what degree really is the resurrection historically defensible?
I was really surprised here that, uh, Rhett would call into question the, uh, uh, what happened to the body of Jesus. The evidence, uh, that the vast majority of New Testament historians find convincing was in fact interred in a tomb by a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin named Joseph of Arimathea. And the question I'd like to ask Rhett is where is your curiosity? Um, he says that he's almost certain that there is an explanation of how it all started that does not involve Jesus' resurrection. Now, this is just amazing to me. He said that the more curious he is, the less confident he is. It's like a teeter-totter. As his curiosity goes up, his confidence goes down. So, as his confidence goes up, his curiosity declines. And yet here he says he is almost certain that Jesus did not rise. Now that betokens an incredible lack of curiosity on Rhett's part. Virtually all skeptical scholars today say that they have no idea how this movement, uh, got started. There is no naturalistic explanation that is accepted by a significant number of scholars. And so I wonder where does Rhett's confidence, um, that it didn't happen come from? Uh, it's certainly not from the evidence. And how does he explain this lack of curiosity on his part?
That's a really good take, Bill. I think, you know, I always hesitate to say something almost certain, but historically speaking the crucifixion of Jesus, if anything is almost certain, it would be that because of the multiple attestation—Josephus and Tacitus outside of biblical accounts—the embarrassing nature of it—there's a strong case for the burial too, so I think I'm with you that there's maybe a little bit of an inconsistency here and a lack of curiosity for all the things someone's going to reject about the resurrection. It strikes me as being more methodological or worldview than the facts that he actually mentioned would be my, my take from listening to it.
That is what I suspect, and that's why I said I don't think this confidence comes from the evidence. I suspect, Sean, as you said, there are worldview considerations that underly this extraordinary confidence and lack of curiosity, and that would need to be explored.
All right, let's look at the next clip. I'm pretty sure that there is a development as the gospels go on about the description of the tomb. So, like in, in Mark's gospel presumably, I think it just says that Jesus is put in a tomb. And in Matthew's gospel, it becomes, uh, a new tomb. And then I think by Luke, it's a new tomb in which no one had been laid. Or maybe that's John. I, I can't remember the details, but there's things that you wouldn't notice that I, I'd never come across this idea before. If the empty tomb is an important apologetic to Jesus' resurrection, well, we know that the tomb was empty. In order to know that the tomb was empty, you need to ensure that Jesus was probably the only person laid in there because otherwise it could have been mixed up with someone else or something like this. And so there is this hint at evidence of an early apologetical motive to make the tomb a new tomb, which means there's no other bodies in there. And then specifically a new tomb in which no one had been laid, right? So that when they say there's an empty tomb, nobody can come along and say, "Well, are you sure it, you know, it wasn't somebody else or someone stole a body or it got lost or something?" No, it has to be an empty tomb. And so you're right that when you—those, those little questions, are we sure that he was taken down from the cross and laid in the tomb in the way that it's described? And if you start to notice apologetical motivations potentially in those very stories, starts to undermine the historicity a little bit. Like how Matthew's gospel is the only one that mentions the guards at the tomb, right?
Basically, the question is, is there a development in the gospels regarding the story of the empty tomb that suggests an apologetic angle that undermines its historicity? And this is the one clip that actually came from Alex instead of Rhett.
Yes.
Well, there's so many things one would like to say about this. Let me just list a few points. First, Mark's account of the empty tomb is striking precisely because of the absence of such apologetic and theological motifs. It seems to be a pretty straightforward account of what actually happened. Secondly, it's not clear that these differences in the later gospels are due to apologetic motifs. Ask yourself, how would it help to say that it was a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid? What, what would that refute? He must be thinking that there's some detractor or opponent of the disciples who said, um, you confuse the remains of Jesus with the remains of someone else that, uh, you thought he was, uh, risen from the dead, uh, but in fact he wasn't. But there was never any dispute, uh, over the identification of Jesus' remains. A man who had been crucified 3 days earlier would be easy to identify. So I don't see that these differences are motivated by apologetical considerations. Um, finally, these details tend to be in the secondary circumstantial features.
Of the narratives and not in their historical core. And that's why the vast majority of scholars, um, treat the empty tomb narrative fundamentally historical, even though you do have these additional details in the later gospels that you don't have in Mark.
That's a great take. I, you know, one thing that came to my mind is even if there was an apologetic angle here, it wouldn't necessarily undermine its historicity. I mean, the end of John, John says, "Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, but they're written so you may believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in his name." John puts his cards on the table.
Yeah. But of course, that's why he points towards miracles. That's why we can assess the eyewitnesses. And so if there's a bias, we still have to ask the question, what does that bias cause? Blindness, belief in the truth, does that affect the way they report the facts? I don't think it even follows that it's unreliable, if there's an apologetic angle at all. Uh, so yeah. Yeah, you're you are absolutely right about that. At most, an apologetic interest would tell us why the author included the detail, but it does absolutely nothing to prove that the detail is therefore non-historical. It would just talk to us or tell us something about the author's motivations. So even given that these motifs were apologetical in nature, you're quite right that all this speaks to is the motivation of the, uh, author, and it says nothing about the facticity of the details related.
We got three more clips. Bill, let's take a look at clip number eight.
There was this there was this one summer that some Mormon missionaries, like I was out I was out of the country doing some missionary work, and Link was still in Raleigh, and there were Mormon missionaries that came to talk to him. They ended up coming back like four or five times, cuz Link that time, especially at the time, wasn't controversial. It wasn't confrontational. He was just like, "Yeah, you guys." So he like they went through the whole spiel or whatever. And then when I got back I was like, "You let them come like five times. You didn't never challenge them." He was like, "Well, I was just kind of waiting." I ended up writing this like pamphlet. I would do this all the time. I would write like little papers or pamphlets or whatever. And there was one that was like, "This is what you need to say the next time the the Mormons come to your door," right? Because you can you can take apart their theirology and their history really in a much it's so recent, right? So that was my perspective. And I find it so interesting that the average Christian apologist, the level of scrutiny they apply to criticizing Mormonism, if they would just for a moment turn that level of scrutiny on their own story, you'd be like, "Guys, come on. Do you see what you're doing?" Or like, and if you if you had been born in a Muslim country and you were of the Muslim faith and you and you didn't believe that Jesus actually raised from the dead, what would your what would your Muslim apologetic about the resurrection be? Like, do you really think these arguments are as strong or is it just you need them to be true? Yeah. It's so foundational to who you are, you need this to be true.
Really, the question is here, do apologists fail to put the same level of scrutiny on their own beliefs as they do on say Mormonism or Islam? And do apologists, you know, need Christianity to be true and thus have a double standard they apply to their own faith?
Yeah, I think this is just manifestly false that, um, Christian apologists do not apply the same level of scrutiny to their own beliefs as they do to to Mormonism, for example, and and if they did they would be skeptical. Um, New Testament scholars like N.T. Wright, Dale Allison, Michael Lacona do exactly that. They apply the same sort of scrutiny to the biblical narr one would to Mormonist other religions, and they determine that these are credible accounts to be believed. Now he he also asks if you were a Muslim what would be your apologetic against Jesus' resurrection? Well, we know the answer to that question because there are so many Muslims. A popular level mo Muslim will typically say that Jesus never really died, that he was never crucified and therefore never buried. Uh, sometimes they will believe that it was Judas Iscariot who was crucified by mistake in Jesus' place. Uh, that's what Muslims say. Uh, and you can weigh on your own whether or not that's a historically credible hypothesis.
You know, Bill, I think it's certainly true that some apologists do this. I mean, there are some apologists that are not as careful as they need to be. But when I was doing my work on the apostles, I distinctly remember Mike Lacona said to me, he goes, "Okay, Sean, you've got to be critical. Ask yourself, would a Muslim scholar or an atheist scholar accept this?" and who's my outside reviewer pressing me to be as objective and careful as I could. So, I think there is a practice among the scholars you mentioned and many others to be critical of our own beliefs and see if they actually can hold up to scrutiny. But nonetheless, this is just a reminder to keep doing that.
Well, sure. Clip number nine.
We're sitting here having this conversation in the context of 2025 where we have access to all this scholarship and all this scholarship and all these discussions about these issues are such a re recent phenomenon that first of all, the tiny minority of people who live today who call themselves Christians care about this stuff and actually take time to think about it. Right? You believe that Jesus rose from the dead if you're a Christian probably because your parents told you. Like 90% because your parents told you, and then you got into a movement where it's continually confirmed by people who come in and they say some smart stuff about it, and this is why you can trust it. So even if it did happen, it doesn't feel like a really penetrating investigation into the historical circumstances is what's going to like, oh, make it click and be like, oh, it did happen. I I looked under the last rock of history and I found the resurrection. Like it doesn't seem like God intended for that to be the way if that's right. It this is clearly some sort of this is a revelation. This is a this is like, you know, this is a secret. This is like God's secret information that you can choose to believe, and then this your life is transformed. Like I'm okay with people who frame it in that way. I'm like, well, I still think that you're I think this is a psychological phenomenon. I don't I don't believe it. I'm a skeptic in that in that regard, but I just find it so interesting the way that some of these apologists go so hard on trying to prove it. Right.
So, this question really is about whether or not people are encouraged to undergo an extensive investigation of Christianity with tools that are only recently available. And does apologetics actually change anybody's mind?
Yeah. Um, he says it's not as though people come to faith through historical investigation. And I think that's absolutely true. Most people who believe in Christ do so because they've had a personal experience of the risen Lord. And there's nothing at all irrational about that.
Then Red asks, why do some apologists go so hard trying to prove this? Do they think this is going to change anybody's mind? Well, I think the answer is because they love people and want them to come to know the joy of knowing Christ and finding eternal life. As Paul said, "The love of Christ constrains us, and therefore we persuade men." Moreover, I think it's important to understand that apologetics goes far beyond your immediate evangelist contact. Apologetics helps to shape a cultural milieu in which the gospel can be heard as an intellectually viable option for thinking men and women. People may not come to Christ because of the arguments, but what the arguments and evidence do is they give people the intellectual permission to believe when their hearts are moved. And I think that that's a great, um, accomplishment of apologetics.
That's really a great take. I think a lot of apologists are motivated by trying to figure out, you know, they have their own questions and doubts and want to know if this is reasonable as well. But someone asked me, they're like, "How would you describe apologetics in one word?" And I said, "Love." When done correctly, it's a way of loving our neighbors and loving the church. So, I love that take that you gave. Yeah. I remember one person said, "It's one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread." That's good stuff.
All right. Final clip here.
You know, religion works. It we we I I definitely believe that we created it, but we created it because we needed it to some degree for the ritual, the community, the sense of awe, these things that are essential to the human experience that I do think you can experience outside of a religious community. But for most of history, religious communities have done that best. And when you have kids and you're raising a family and you're looking for purpose and meaning and, uh, structure, you can choose to like hodgepodge create that on your own or you can plug into a community that has a set of shared myths. And that's a really difficult thing to to navigate.
Here's really the question, Bill. Did we create religion because we needed it? You know, you might as well say that an internal combustion engine created gasoline because it needs it. I agree that man is oriented toward the transcendent. We were made in God's image, made to know him. And so our needing God is exactly what you would expect if God did create us to know him. So this is not at all surprising. You know, I I think some religion could be explained as being invented. There's certain things for power and control, but I have no interest in defending religion per se. I I find within Christianity some powerful things that are so unlikely to have been invented, like again the crucifixion. They'd never invent that as a as a death. It's so dishonorable. Uh, the idea that if you have a thought of anger or a thought of lust, you're guilty of murder or you're guilty of adultery. Even the idea of grace is beautiful when we understand it. But there's a reason why all other religions are based on some kind of works that you do. There's something counterintuitive about it. And even things in the gospels like when there were controversies in the early church, Jesus so easily or some of the early writers could have invented words to put in Jesus's mouth to settle controversies, and they don't. And so I just don't think we find the marks of invention within Christianity that we do in so many other faiths.
Yeah, that's well said. Bill, thanks for weighing in here. Any final thoughts or reflections on watching this that we maybe missed?
Yeah, I found Rhett to be a very amiable and likable fellow. And honestly, my heart just breaks for him, Sean, when I see how he's rejected Christian faith so unnecessarily based upon a a distorted, uh, web of Christian beliefs and so incurious about things like the resurrection of Jesus. I I hope that maybe as a result of our interview today, if he watches it, that he might be provoked to to look into some of these things more deeply and to ask himself if it really could be true.
Well, I appreciate you coming on. Always appreciate your compassion and thoughtfulness, Bill. I've actually reached out to Rhett and Link as partners a few times. Had my team reach out. Uh, no response. He's busy, but I would certainly love to have that conversation with him, uh, if he was open and willing to do so. Folks watching this, sorry about some of the tech issues. I don't know why things paused. We hopefully edited this together in a way that's helpful for you. But let me know if these kind of reaction videos are helpful. I've done a few recently. I don't run primarily reaction, uh, video channel. But now and then videos come up. I want to give your feedback on it. So, is this format helpful? Would you like to see more in this channel? Let us know. And make sure you hit subscribe. We've got a lot of other interviews coming up, including Bill will be back to talk about this is volume one of his systematic philosophical theology. I have read most of volume two in the PDF he sent me, and we have an interview coming up I'm looking forward to, and I hope you'll think about studying with me here at Biola Talbot School of Theology in Apologetics. Bill, always enjoy doing this with you. Thanks so much for your time.
Oh, you're welcome, Sean.