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Doubt, Certainty & Apologetics: Getting these Concepts Right

Feb 27, 2020
welcome to the show I'm so glad you're here I'm Braxton Hunter and this is Trinity radio and today we're going to talk mostly about

doubt

but also about faith and

apologetics

stay with me you don't need any stinking

apologetics

and once you start talking about apologetics and bringing up topics that they had no idea about before, they say, well, wait a minute. I should worry about this. I thought everything was great. Do you think that in our culture, with our television shows, our movies, our music, do you really think that people haven't thought about these things or faced the challenges to the Christian faith?
doubt certainty apologetics getting these concepts right
One of the best arguments they have is the problem of suffering. Christians will think about that without even encountering a problem. secular message ever and raise topics that they had no idea about before, of course these people know that there are challenges recently, quite surprising when like every Christian YouTuber you can imagine, they were together in a room, in a place , answering questions from your subscribers, a really excellent discussion. and the internet YouTuber, atheist YouTuber Pine Creek, whose real name is Doug, did an episode and I actually found something that Doug said that he was pretty close to being

right

.
doubt certainty apologetics getting these concepts right

More Interesting Facts About,

doubt certainty apologetics getting these concepts right...

Doug isn't always wrong, you know, and in this case I think he found something that I think I can sympathize with, if I don't totally agree, at least he'll get maybe half the credit, so let's hear what Doug has to say. say to set the stage for the show. Bring the microphone here so I have another question his name is Anthony Route and he's actually one of my sponsors so thank you very much Anthony for supporting me and anyone how do we explain to others especially in the church the importance of apologetics? There seems to be a lot of resistance.
doubt certainty apologetics getting these concepts right
It seems that's what the resistance to apologetics says. Not so, why in the world would there be resistance to apologetics? Can any Christian answer? That, for me, let me try. I think there is resistance to apologetics because some pastors and preachers correctly admit that for some Christians. apologetics distances them from Christ. I think many preachers and elders

right

ly say that apologetics may be too academic for the average Christian and they just love Jesus. Now those are actually two different things. Let's leave aside the question of what. your academics, whether it's too academic or whether preachers think it's too academic because that's not really directly relevant to what we're talking about here, that may well be true, okay, that may be the case and those pastors and Preachers, most of them don't feel that way and I'll tell you how I know that in just a second, but I think you're right when you say there's a fear that if we introduce Christian apologetics, by virtue of doing that we'll get it done. clear what the criticisms of Christianity are so that people, perhaps, have

doubt

s bred in them, they may not have the maximum

certainty

that we want them to have, so there is a little fear now, it says that the pastors admit this and I don't think it's true and one of the reasons I can say I don't think it's true and I don't think most pastors would say it's too academic is that I recently participated in my PhD project and a major research project. writing for the doctoral program that I'm in the middle of for a group of church people who are late church people ranging in age from 24 and I think they were like 80 something, they were the oldest men and women. and we did this project and I've done things like that all over the southeastern United States and then we did a pretest and a posttest to ask them ten questions that have to do with their confidence in having worldview conversations with other people their knowledge of the apologetics your awareness of what Christian apologetics is all about the arguments that are used in things like that, so I had to do with having meaningful conversations with others about worldview issues and your ability to articulate and your awareness of these arguments and things so so I did this we did a pretest and a posttest and then we were going to evaluate if this eight hour seminar basically moved the needle in terms of your confidence and your competence in doing this and so it was a success we saw a huge improvement , everything has been recorded, everything has been written down, we had cameras and microphones, it is being supervised by a group of professors from an accredited university that, therefore, there is no doubt about it. the authenticity of this or if it was done right and all that kind of stuff there's going to be an oral I have to go defend this ordered and all that kind of stuff and part of what I did for that was in addition to that I sent questionnaires to everyone from pastors representing all major regions of the United States and several countries outside the United States of various denominations.
doubt certainty apologetics getting these concepts right
I think it was like eight or nine denominations of Christianity and churches of all sizes and what that turned out to be. Were there answers to what you suspect is true about the people in your church? None of them admit it. None admitted that he thought apologetics could be dangerous to his people or caused them doubt. 100 percent of them said. that they thought apologetics was incredibly important or at least very important to the people in their churches and I think maybe one or two of them said something like that, it might be too academic, but the majority thought that their people, I think all of them They thought their people could understand the

concepts

if they really tried, really wanted it, it's more a matter of apathy than anything else, it's what they suspected was true of people, so I've actually done some real research on this. in the real world and not I don't know anyone else personally who has done that level of research on this same topic so I feel like I can talk about it and during reading and studying I read a book called The Benefit of the Doubt by Greg Boyd, some of you will.
I know who Greg Boyd is and I actually think he said something very similar, although I don't think the pastors would admit what he just said, do you think privately, in the privacy of your own thoughts, that if I present these things to my people? Maybe we will start to doubt, but that would be mere speculation and I think Pine Creek would admit that it is just speculating, but I think that is probably the case with some of the people in the banks and I think I have some data that could suggest that it may be that by So some of them might be afraid to have some of these worldview conversations, because they realize that their hands could get dirty when they do apologetics and that they would maybe experience some level of doubt and I think that's a relevant point that shouldn't be made. overlook if you are young in the faith and just converted to Christianity not long ago you should keep in mind that hearing a lot of atheist voices or even Christian voices that represent what the atheist might say, that can generate some doubt and that should be, forgive me, I think I'm still recovering from the flu, but that may raise some doubt, so keep that in mind, but this.
It brings us to a serious problem: one of the reasons why it may be the case that Christians do not engage more in Christian apologetics, some lay people, some lay people, are not learning these things and are not willing to have conversations with people, it is because of this fear and in the book The Benefit of the Doubt by Greg Boyd, he talks about this and explains the fact that what has happened in American evangelicalism unfortunately for each denominator there are several denominations of Christianity, but although that It's true and although everyone has their specific doctrinal type of sacred cows there are certain fears that because of what is at stake, man, the stakes in this are so high that some people are still going to have certain concerns and fears and doubts that arise simply uncoupled at a doctrinal level, so think about this in the south.
Baptist world about the only thing left in the life of Southern Baptists which is like a basic element of being a Southern Baptist that if you run into ten stubborn Baptists there's a good chance all ten of us have this and that's the belief in eternal security the doctrine of eternal security more commonly known as the once saved, always saved doctrine that if you truly become a Christian you cannot lose that salvation and you cannot lose that salvation you cannot walk away you will not walk away from that salvation if you really were saved, so once you're saved, you're always saved, eternal security like that, okay, that's a staple of Southern Baptist life and there are Presbyterian churches that are like that, but I guarantee you there are people in all denominations, including the Southern Baptist Church. and the Presbyterian denominations that sit in the pews and listen to a fire and brimstone sermon and are terrified that they have lost their salvation because of some sinful thing they did or because they are not doing enough for God now, why? is that because they don't hold that doctrinal position, no, they could hold the doctrinal position of eternal security, but it's because there's so much at stake that they have this fear in a similar way and this is where it comes back to Doug in a similar way, often It's the case that people equate whether or not they are a true Christian unfortunately with the strength of their

certainty

about the truth of Christianity, so they think you know I have to be really sure about this and if I'm not absolutely sure I start to experiencing doubt maybe I've lost my salvation maybe I was never saved to begin with maybe something is going wrong in my life maybe God isn't answering my prayers maybe someone won't be healed and Greg Boyd said he came back to this idea of ​​writing this book on this topic because he was sitting in a group at one point, he's probably wrong on the details, but it's in the book and he was in a circle of people who were praying for someone who was in, you know, maybe in their deathbed you know they've been in a car accident or something, a relatively young person and they could die and so they were praying and they had the idea that, hey, look, we have to be absolutely sure that We have to name it and claim it. , we have to be sure of this without a doubt because if there is any lack of certainty that God is going to heal him then our prayers might not be answered and he will die and Greg Boyd says he was sitting there he was thinking to himself this is so strange like I've always believed this but it's like there's a gun it's almost like God has a gun to our friend's head and he's saying you better be safe enough because if you are he's not safe enough for him to die. if you're sure enough that he lives as if his friend's life depends on how sure and psychologically secure they can be about this and that is very strange, right, and that's really strange, well, why do people date this kind of idea, where do they get these good ideas from?
There are passages of Scripture that are not placed in their proper historical context or are not correctly understood in terms of the original languages. You might get something like this. Greg Boyd calls this the certainty-seeking model. he says in this model of seeking certainty when Jesus said according to your faith, let it happen to you Matthew 9:29, he was saying that the more certain you are that God will do things, the more you will see God do them. things so when the man said to Jesus, I believe, help me overcome my disbelief at the 924 mark within this paradigm, the man was asking him Lord, I can only hit the discus of faith a little higher than the goalpost. faith, but please help me ring certainty.
Bell, we'll come back to that analogy in just a minute along the same lines when Jesus praised the centurion for having great faith in Matthew 8:10. The certainty-seeking model would have us understand that Jesus was praising his psychological certainty that Jesus could and would do what he needed him to do, in contrast when Jesus rebuked the disciples for having little faith Matthew 14 31 he agreed with this model expressing his anger because they wavered in their certainty about what he could and would do so, how should these passages? To correctly understand how these passages are to be correctly understood, there are two things at play here, on the one hand, the word faith and, on the other hand, the word belief and, as I have said repeatedly on this channel, faith is not just believing in what you know is not so, is not just believing without evidence, faith is trust, faith is loyalty and you can have trust and loyalty in Jesus even if you are experiencing doubt, so Greg Boyd describes it as if this belief is an opinion about something or someone while Faith is the willingness to commit to a course of action based on our belief.
Salvation is more like entering into a marriage, as a covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ by exercising faith, whereas one might measure beliefs in terms of how certain or uncertain a person is. Does the mother feel if the measure of faith is simply about how a person is, how faithful a person is in living the old covenant relationship they have with the Lord now that it does not result in a space ofsalvation type work where it's like you're only exercising faith if you're doing enough works but it's more like really if you really have faith if you really trust and are loyal to Jesus you're going to do what Jesus says, that doesn't mean you'll never sin , but you will try to live the Christian life to do what your teacher wants you to do and what you can do.
That you can live the Christian life the same way if you are absolutely certain or if you have some doubts, you can still live that life of faith by Despite that, so you must understand that distinction that belief is an opinion about something or someone. while faith is the willingness to commit to a course of action based on our belief and there are many stories in the Bible of incredible heroes of faith who experienced times of immense doubt, so I think all of this is very important to understand and when you connect those words with this with these passages, it just doesn't, it just doesn't come out the same way you get.
I think a more biblical understanding of what faith and belief really is, so I think that's really important is the analogy that Boyd gives for this and, by the way, for those of you who know Greg Boyd's work, I have some important differences with Greg Boyd on some things that I think are very important secondary doctrinal issues, but I think where he tells the truth, he tells the truth and here he gives a great analogy, he says it's like at the fair or something, ya You know, those games where you have like a big mallet and you hit the thing with it and then the puck. turn the thing up and you're trying to raise it all the way to ring the bell at the top and some people are trying to hit this thing and turn it all the way up to ring the faith bell on our Here's an analogy so it's like If every Christian was like someone trying to hit that thing and get the puck as high as they can because if they can't get to the bell of faith, then maybe God won't answer our prayers. or maybe our friends are going to die or maybe you know, maybe the people we pray for are sick, their life depends on whether I can exercise enough psychological certainty to ring that bell and that's not what it doesn't sound like God would do it and That's not what I don't think is the best explanation of what the Bible is giving us, so when this comes back, I think because I think Boyd is right, because people have this understanding of what this is. misunderstanding of certainty, then they think that if I don't have absolutely the same certainty about the truth of Christianity if I ever experienced any doubt that it could mean that I'm no longer saved or it could mean that I was never saved or it could mean all these other horrible things and Since there is so much at stake on the level of your eternal salvation, then you think that you can get that person to go out and talk to someone who is not a believer and use apologetics, not at all because the stakes are so high and they may experience doubt and Then Where would I be?
I could be in hell right now frankly I think if you ask random people in the church that's what you really think most of them will say no of course that's not really what I think but these They are the fears that lie beneath the surface. which I think are present there and people don't want those kinds of beliefs to be altered, so I think it's a relevant concern, so while much of the apologetics world might be focused and I've been, let's put the right material in their hands, let's Encourage them about the importance of this and how important it is to reach others for Christ because then you need to be saved and you don't want them to go to hell and you want to be able to do this and stand up for it because you know. all these kinds of things where they are sitting there thinking and we are trying to hit them too and listen, you have to be confident, are you worried, are you embarrassed if not?
I don't know the answers, that's part of it for a lot of people, but the reality is it's not all, they may not have brought up a problem by speaking in public or talking about controversial things, they may be I'm concerned about self-preservation in this sense, so I think it is a relevant concern, but it arises from a misunderstanding about what it means to really be a Christian and what the uncertainty about faith and beliefs is about now that I am a Christian. methodology of apologetics that is called classical apologetics there is a type of Christian apologetics called presuppositional apologetics and yesterday I had a two hour conversation with one of my good friends, a wonderful guy, I won't name him because I will tell you what I think. where I think he would agree with me and if I'm wrong, you know, I don't want to call him by his name and give him a bad reputation for agreeing with this bald, bearded guy, but I was talking to him for two hours about this presuppositionalist kind of yesterday and we are talking about certainty and among presuppositionalists you can have what is known as Cartesian certainty now this becomes important what is Cartesian certainty?
Cartesian certainty for René Descartes, who thought he was trying to discover what I can do. I know for sure, and for sure I don't mean colloquially, if you ask me, are you sure the external world is real? I can more or less trust my senses, that the outside world is real. I'm going to say yes. I'm sure that's fine, colloquially I'm sure of that, but in a specific academic epistemological sense, do I have Cartesian certainty about certain things? That's a different question because what we mean is something you know and it's impossible to doubt. So Descartes was trying to figure that out, so he got to the point where he discovered, "Okay, if there's one thing I can know for sure without a doubt it's that I exist because even if the external world isn't real and all that." I know that I am experiencing existence right now, so I must exist cogito ergo sum.
I think, therefore, I'm right, for him to know that he knew a lot and then he tried to build from that to God, but the thing is, he could know that. Here's the problem that others have pointed out after Dick Hart and that is that even when you come to that conclusion about your own existence, you still rely on your reasoning ability to make that cognitive connection that if I'm thinking then that must mean that I Exist, so that means he thinks he would have to think he has absolute certainty that he can trust his reasoning but of course he can't have that level of certainty so he can't even be certain about his own existence because

getting

there would have You trust your own reasoning with an absolute sense of Cartesian certainty so what does that tell you?
Well, it tells you that this idea of ​​Cartesian certainty is frankly unnecessary. I think now presuppositionalists will say, "you can, you really can get there." your understanding of this methodology they would say okay, epistemological and we start with what we call the proximal starting point, which is our ability to reason correctly, we have to start there, that's true, but in that sense there is something circular about this, but we have an ultimate starting point and that ultimate starting point is not chronological, but our ultimate starting point is God and since we ultimately see that God is the Guru, it is the reason why the universe is intelligible and he is the basis of intelligibility, although our approximate starting point was reason why that is our fundamental starting point and we discover that because that is the fundamental reality, then we can have Cartesian certainty about the existence of God and the gospel and maybe some other things right now.
If you see problems with that, I also see the problem that I see with Frankly, if you have a rough starting point, where you start is with your reason and you can't be one hundred percent sure of that, even if you arrive at this concept that you're saying. which is your final starting point. of God, you still got there through this proximate starting point of your reason, so I see a problem there, okay, but let's postpone that for a minute, so I mean there are some precepts, well, most of your Presuppositionalists will say that you can.
They have this Cartesian certainty that it is beyond doubting God and the gospel and that kind of thing they will say that, but I think the sensible presuppositionalist like my friend who I talked to and argued with for two hours yesterday about this would agree with me about Lo What I am going to say now does not mean that you are not a Christian if you experience doubts, if you are like me and you think that that type of Cartesian certainty that you know you cannot have or at least most of the time you cannot understand that we are not saying that I can't be sure of the truth of Christianity, it's just that I can't have the level of certainty that Descartes thought he had about his own existence.
That's so academic and so out there that it's almost like it's not that useful, so the point I want to make here is doubt, the precept that my presuppositionalist friends wouldn't say doubt, the Christian person who is doubting is, for Therefore, they are not Christians, they would not even confirm the things that some Christians fear are true, so in that sense, what we need to do as Christians and as church leaders is make sure that people are aware of that, but So to back up some of what I want with what I just said or for someone to put it another way, let's look at this statement by William Lane Craig from 2019 which shows a wide range of attitudes towards the Christian faith when it comes to its certainty about the Christian faith some Christians have 100% deep certainty or so they say about the truth of the Christian faith other Christians really struggle, they struggle with the doubt that torments them and yet they cling tenaciously to the Christian faith and then there is all the intermediate positions between those two and I think it's important to understand that certainty is just a psychological property or state, it's just the property of being firmly convinced of something and as such certainty really has no relation to truth, you can to be absolutely sure of something that turns out to be false.
When my son was 17 years old he had this problem. Believe me, Dad, he said and then it turned out to be wrong, so certainty is no guarantee of truth and, similarly, doubt and uncertainty are not indications of error. There are certain truths, such as a complex mathematical equation that is necessarily true, and yet we are not sure that we have done the calculation correctly. We are not free from any doubt that this could be the case. So what I want you to get out of. This is certainty, our level of confidence about something is a psychological issue for us, it does not affect whether Christianity is true or not and doubt does not make it less true.
Certainty does not make it more true. Doubt does not. It doesn't make it any less true and I think that's an important thing and as he says, there have been Christians who have claimed 100 percent Cartesian certainty all the time and there are people who experience doubt at the level that they couldn't. I mean they have Cartesian certainty, but let's go ahead and take a look now. I want you to hear this from this is the guy whose book I read to you a little bit and he was talking about the benefit of the doubt. This is Greg Boyd.
This is what Greg Boyd has to say Several years ago, this dear lady approached me at a church service where I was preaching and she shared with me that he is a passionate follower of Jesus, he loves Jesus with all his heart, but she really struggles by I think some of the stories in the Bible are really the Word of God, some of the stories just don't seem historical to her, they seem more legendary and other stories she thought were too immoral to be the Word of God and then she looked at me with tears. in her eyes and she said: do you think I can be saved despite my weak faith?
She was terrified by this. My heart just broke for her. The assumption behind her question is that a person's faith is only as strong as her faith. She is as strong as she is free from doubt, and her assumption was that her salvation depended on remaining sufficiently certain of every story in the Bible. That's how I think most people more or less think about faith today, and yet I think it's a deeply unbiblical model. of faith and in fact it is doing us a lot of harm, and in this model of faith, becoming a Christian is not just about developing a relationship with Jesus, but about embracing this whole package of beliefs and trying to convince yourself of this whole package. of beliefs including every story in the Bible with this model of faith the church becomes a gathering of people who are trying to suppress their doubts to convince themselves that all their beliefs are true it becomes the community of people who have afraid to really deal with the difficulties, questions and admitting any kind of ambiguity becomes the community of people who are afraid to really try to reach inside and understand the perspectives of people who disagree with them because doing so could alter their own certainty and you can see why they are more skeptical.
Unbelievers today wouldn't find anything attractive about that model of faith or that, yeah, so this is again like I've got it, I've got it and this poor lady you're talking about and I've encountered people like that. I can't hit the thing with the mallet and make the puttof faith reaches the Bell, then maybe I'm not really a Christian and, frankly, what I see happening a lot of times is when I see that I've been Now I'm watching these atheist deconversion stories for at least a year on YouTube, just people that they never have really small YouTube channels, that maybe their deconversion story is one of the few videos that they have and they're not a big YouTuber, but I've listened to a lot of those and what I find very often is that there's often this , you know, a little doubt and then the whole thing fell apart or a little doubt and then I threw it all away, you know, yeah, I guess you know, they have a particular view of Genesis and if six-day creationism isn't true, so Christianity is false and they and and It's straight out the door now.
I think most of them would say no. I tried looking at some materials and tried to see what Christians have to say, but we'll see why that can still be problematic if you don't. talk to other Christians about these concerns and really have a support group around you because one of the places you go when you start to have doubts and you're afraid to talk to other Christians about it is you go to the Internet and despite My best efforts and the best efforts of other Christian YouTubers and other Christian resources. YouTube is still dominated by skepticism and secular voices, so what you're going to get there is you're going to get a message that has almost very little to it.
Against this per capita, at least currently, we are now trying to do something about it, but that is a major problem and what happens is that then you can have a little doubt and then you are almost out the door and that is a important problem while the Christian faith is very open to discussions and doubts and you know how to ask God these deep questions in prayer and wrestle and wrestle with them and you know it's not that you have to have this Cartesian certainty all the time and that's very important, so let's address that additional topic about having a support group around you because I want you to hear what William Lane Craig again has to say here in this video.
I think it is important to go to God with your doubts. and to be honest with him, as you say, the psalmist expressed this openly rather than trying to pad it out and hide it, and I think it's also very important that people can find other people that they can talk to about so many people leaving the La Iglesia says the reason they left was because they didn't feel they could be honest with Oakland about the doubts they had in the fight. Well, now you hear that many of the people who leave the church say it's because they couldn't.
They didn't feel like they could be open and honest about the worries they had, so they just suppressed them until they became self-destructive, which is why a person needs to get into some kind of group or circle. where these things can be discussed honestly, I think Kerri, yeah, so you say you want to be able to talk to others. Now let me give you an example in the testimony of genetically modified skeptics. This is what he said when he began to experience these doubts. is what he says he did with them I chose to put any thoughts of doubt I had out of my head whenever they arose I decided to trust in faith rather than face any challenge to my beliefs my summer of 2015 we decided to dedicate ourselves to teaching others about which is fine, then she continues from here.
He compares his deconversion story to his awareness of the problems with essential oils or something, but he buried his doubts, now later he explored them, but we encourage him not to bury them. those doubts not to bury your head in the sand like that, as Craig says, we would encourage you to join a small group to start talking about these things and that means that as church leaders, church leaders need to be open to me. I know our church is open to those questions being asked, in fact, frankly, I think a lot of things are said because it sounds good, well, I could never ask that question in my church because we're not allowed to.
Ask those kinds of questions or I would be embarrassed if Frantz asked those kinds of questions. Listen. I have been to hundreds of churches over the last 15 years, literally hundreds of churches. I can't think of a single church I've ever known. have I ever been in that wouldn't be open to you asking tough questions and talking about them with you now there are varying degrees of how capable those different congregations would be at answering them, but they would be open to that now why is it so important? Well, it's important because there's actually been some study done on religious beliefs, the Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, the process of doubt, a longitudinal study of the precipitants and consequences of religious doubt, and in this article they said that These data revealed that over time people who encountered more negative interaction with their fellow congregants have more doubts about religion, while greater spiritual support and greater participation in prayer groups are associated with fewer religious doubts, so If you have negative experiences in your congregation you will be more likely to doubt and if you have support and spiritual support and prayer groups and things like that.
You will experience less of this type of doubt, not necessarily in all cases, but it is just a trend here, but this is what I really want you to hone in on more in the findings. indicated that people who encountered more negative interaction are more likely to suppress religious doubts, but people who attend Bible study groups are more likely to seek spiritual growth when faced with doubts, so here's what that means If you're the type of person who starts If you experience doubt and bury your head in the sand or keep it to yourself, those doubts will persist, whereas if you expressed those doubts to a Bible study group, a group of Christian friends, and If you look for those answers, then you can have those that are not so important, you can actually experience spiritual growth, and what I think often happens is that people think that it comes first, people think that if I don't have certainty, then I won't have it, maybe not.
If I'm really a Christian, I'm afraid and they might not want to talk about it with other people in the church and, especially if they've had negative experiences with people in the church, they're not going to talk about it with people in the church and, like As a result, they hide it from themselves and then it all comes back to the surface, whereas on the other hand, if someone were open to talking about their doubts regardless of what someone might think about them because of it, In fact, I can see spiritual growth from this and it goes in the opposite direction, so all that to say I think there is in the art of the magazine.
I think there is good data on this in the magazine articles. I see that we're seeing things from some of these Christian communicators like Greg Boyd and their own work on this and we like Craig, they endorse some of this and I think we're seeing that make sense in what we're hearing even from skeptics and atheists. . what we're dealing with, back to Pine Creek, do I agree with Pine Creek? I don't think you're right that pastors are willing to admit this in general, although there are some who will say there might be something wrong with apologetics. or something like that he will have to show me who he is, but I think that on the part of some people in the church there is this concern, but it is because of a misunderstanding of faith, a misunderstanding, a belief, a misunderstanding of certainty, a misunderstanding of salvation and I think instead, if we were willing to say, "Okay, look," doubts will arise, they're just part of what it means to be human, whether you're religious or not, so I think what we'd see as a result is more of You could say that they are willing to investigate some of these things and get the answers now, but why should they do that?
I mean, even if it's not a question of salvation, why should they put themselves in positions that could result in

getting

their hands dirty and occasionally there may be some doubt, well, let's go back to what Pine Creek said and run with it because I think it second thing he says is completely wrong, let's listen to him, they only want hope, the gift, they only want eternal security. I just want in their darkest hour to have someone there helping them, they don't need stinking apologies and once you start talking about apologies and bringing up topics they had no idea about before, they say, well wait a minute, I should care. .
This I thought was all great, but you're bringing up all these potential problems, okay, wait a second, in my opinion, I don't know how you could say, I don't know how you could say this, maybe this is part of it. of the problem of a live stream, if you sat down and thought about this a little bit, do you think that in our culture, with our television shows, our movies, our music and everything that's going on with the Internet, do you really think that people No, they have not thought about these things or faced the challenges of the Christian faith now.
They might not like, you know, breaking down, you know all the Christian YouTube channels or talking about Sam Harris's free will or you know, busting. bring up the philosophical argument of divine concealment or something, but the best argument and I think many atheists would agree that one of the best arguments they have is the problem of suffering, the problem of evil, the arguments of evil, specifically the evidentiary argument from Evil and Christians will think about that without ever finding a secular message because everyone will experience suffering and suddenly think, wait a minute, where is God in the midst of my suffering?
But in addition to that, they are finding it in the culture. They are facing it from all directions, what do you mean the Christian is sitting there thinking I thought everything was fine? you mean there are challenges, of course, these people know there are challenges, I mean, I just think that's what it is and those kind of clues as to why I think this is a mistake, he thinks that by doing apologetics and by making the apologetics becomes more widely known, people are going to experience more doubts, get their hands dirty, and abandon the faith that may happen. for some people, but here's the reality: They're going to find these messages, they're going to find them in the culture, and so where is the best place for them to hear about them from our perspective as Christians?
So they can hear about them is in church and hear the answers to those questions and that can cause a little bit of hesitation, but then they get the support, they get the people there to surround them and help them with that, as we've seen. The magazine articles indicate that that actually results in spiritual growth, which is where it should take place rather than in the culture where yes, once you're afraid to talk about it with Christians and then when you go to investigate it somewhere else part. you've gone Full Tilt so I think this part of the hypothesis just doesn't work, what should happen is we should recognize and I think that's why 100 percent of those who responded to the questionnaire I sent to all regions in the United States and outside the United States, 100% of them said that no apology is important and why is it because they know that their people are going to find these things, they know that they are going to find them in the culture, so that doesn't make sense. by trying to hide these realities from them, we instead present them with good apologetic arguments, which we should do instead of eliminating this unnecessary fear that if I don't have Cartesian certainty all the time then I'm not a good Christian or I'm not a good Christian.
I am lost, that is simply unbiblical and, frankly, possibly unattainable and as a result we must be aware of this and we must ensure that we never send that message and this is where I think sensible presuppositionalist friends My close friend who I spoke to yesterday would be agree with me that what we need to do is encourage people to listen if they have doubts, that's okay and they can talk to us about those doubts and we need to have a biblical understanding of what faith and belief is and we need to talk about those things together and we want to talk about that we want to be a people that explores these things as a community of faith, let's see if Pine Creek says something else that wants to talk and surely you are giving solutions to these problems by eating all these problems existed and what You know?
I didn't even know these problems existed. I mean, what problem are you talking about? You can't be talking about the question about whether the resurrection really happened because any thinking person who has ever heard the story thinks well, you know it's an incredible story, you know, it really happened, the problem of evil that you can't talk about, are you aiming for this kind of thing? along with the problem of evil, so are you talking about something like the paradox of omniscience? I mean, what are you talking about? In my opinion, this is, people will come across these things, you know, they start to dive into these things for themselves and say oh.
Okay, I don't believe in this solution and here's another problem I just encountereddiscover when I was trying to research this. It's absolutely true, that's what happens when you bury your head in the sand and don't talk about those doubts and then they bubble up. to the surface because this is where those doubts will be there and we can, maybe we can overcome some of those doubts, but there will always be doubts, well, we can experience spiritual growth in the midst of doubts, but if you bury your head in the And those Doubts will come back with a vengeance and when they do, you could spend all night going down a YouTube/Google hole and an internet rat hole and find something like the Pine Creek channel, yeah, or search or find one of these other characters and then there is no really well-educated Christian voice to respond to your concerns.
It makes much more sense if you have doubts, to present it in the right context where you can see the spiritual. growth as indicated by the magazine articles, okay, so that's what I wanted us to get here, here's the message for you. I have experienced doubts. There are times in my life when I have never heard a voice that I have never heard before. an audible voice of God. I never felt God touch me physically. I've never seen anything obviously supernatural now, but I've said it many times on this show. I have had many experiences in worship environments where I do this.
I think that in those moments I had something very close to Cartesian certainty. I remember a specific moment that I have talked about several times before, where I was going through extreme despair and in a moment of prayer it was the closest I got to a physical manifestation of God. as I have ever experienced it and I remember at that moment thinking about Braxton, I actually thought you have Cartesian certainty right now, okay, I'm not saying that, but this is what I want you to recognize if you don't have all that. the time that I'm not okay either, but here's the doesn't mean you're not a Christian doesn't mean oh, I guess maybe now I'm an unbeliever because there's a difference between doubt and unbelief and that's very important but here's the other side of that thing, doubt also exists on the other side, don't you ever listen to an atheist who doesn't tell you that he never experiences doubt about elements of the worldview if, frankly, he doesn't?
I'm not sure that's healthy, and secondly, I'm not sure, I think there are questions. I have a video about the nature of hell from a few months ago and at the beginning we talked, we took a look at the cosmic skeptic and about Another five or six atheists in programs say that it is still a normal thing for them to occasionally experience fear of hell. What is it? That's a question about worldview. It's a question of whether they are in the right boat. If you're trying to clear up your doubts, frankly, this is a bit of a balance to do your kind of thing.
I'm not giving this to you as a reason to be a Christian or that's why Christianity is true, none of that so you can keep all your fallacies to yourself, but I will tell you this on the basis of doubts, you will have doubts either way. and, on the other hand, the doubts that you will have what is at stake are much higher. There is much more at stake. I am there with fear of hell even after I am now an atheist. I mean, that's surprising, but we can see spiritual growth here, but it means that you have to talk about these things, so I think.
There are some of you who struggle with this and some of you who are in this channeling are always seeking absolute certainty. I've noticed with atheist arguments that it's almost as if Christians sometimes do this too, it's almost as if the argument doesn't give us this absolute certainty that we can find some way out of it. It was like last episode when Max Baker Hike made a probabilistic argument and Alex O'Connor said yes, but couldn't it technically come out of this thing's teeth if he could prove it's at least somewhat possible? It is at least possible that perhaps evolution has resulted in this accidental byproduct of information.
Okay and Max's answer is no, that's not because this is. No, you're looking for something in this deductive argument for sure, that's not what it is, this is a probabilistic argument and I see this a lot, there is something like that, if I can find some small way to escape the force of this. argument oh now I don't have to adopt that argument anymore that's not what we should do we should look at what's probably true what's probably true and I'm going to stick with it will I ever be certain no probably no yes I may always have doubts , but I'm going to go with what is probably true even though I have doubts and when I have doubts it doesn't mean I'm no longer a believer, it means I'm experiencing galls and this can actually be It's a good time to share those doubts with other Christians and experience some spiritual growth, so this is what I want you to do if you're a Christian and you've occasionally experienced some of that, take a deep breath, let it out, okay, it happens. the natural thing happens to atheists, half of everyone, just a part of life, doesn't mean we have to have an existential crisis about this, the evidence is powerful enough for it to exist.
I think Christianity is the most defensible worldview and I think you can rest on that, but there is Another aspect of this that I want to say before we go is that I like what William Lane Craig often says: it is through apologetics and the production of evidence that we can prove that Christianity is true, but it is through work. of the Spirit in our lives that we can know that Christianity is true, so although I would never ask you to become Christians simply on the basis of my personal anecdotal experience of God, my personal subjective conscious experience, but I can tell you that our Christians who Think about it, think about it, there is very good evidence and in moments of doubt that helps, but you also have a personal relationship with the Lord, there are moments in your life like it was for me, where you are like in a moment of worship. or in a moment of prayer, I do it right now.
There may still be some doubts, but my God, it's there, it's there, I know it's true and that's important, it's important to remember, so I wish I could go to that cool house where that whole team of apologists hung out like the Avengers. that they apologize. They invited me. It didn't work out, maybe next time and I'll see you next time on Trinity Radio.

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