Editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle talk to apologist Dr. Frank Turek. Dr. Turek is an author, public speaker and radio host. He is the author of two books (Correct, Not Politically Correct and Stealing from God) and co-author of two more with Norman Geisler (I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist and Legislating Morality).He hosts a call-in talk show called CrossExamined on American Family Radio. His television show, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, airs on the NRB Network. Kyle and Ethan talk to Turek about bad atheist arguments, evidences for Christianity, and Ethan sings a special song inspired by the CrossExamined website logo. Pre-order the new Babylon Bee Best-Of Coffee Table Book coming in 2020! Get a Sneak Peak! Topics Discussed Is Turek of any relation to Turok the dinosaur hunter? Ethan asks Frank if he wants to hear a song he wrote for him. It gets intense. Bad atheist arguments Who would win in a fight? If God is good and all-powerful, how could he allow the Star Wars Prequels to exist? Are murder hornets ontologically bad? What the evidences for the New Testament? Subscriber Portion Kyle and Ethan ask Frank Turek questions submitted by our subscribers and then give him The Ten Questions To watch or listen to the full length podcast, become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
He doesn't, yeah, he hunts dinosaur fossils and corrects the timing and the who created them.
He hunts dinosaur fossils.
He hunts dinosaur people that dig dinosaurs.
Wait, what?
People dig him up, and then they're like, oh, this has been here for a million years.
And Frank's like, actually, gunshot.
Sorry.
Frank Turek, welcome to the Babylon Bee podcast.
Hey, it's great being with you guys.
We're excited to be like, I really do.
I was telling you off the air, I love the Babylon Bee.
I mean, some of my favorite headlines I can do from memory.
Yeah, you're rattling some off.
It was awesome.
You actually mentioned Kyle's first ever headline that he wrote.
Yes.
Obviously, did his research.
It was Holy Spirit unable to move after fog machine breaks.
I love that.
That was classic.
Just reporting the facts, Frank.
That's what we do.
So, Frank, I came across your videos while doing late night YouTube binging.
YouTube recommended you to me.
I don't know how I got there, but somehow on the rabbit trail.
You were watching Alex Jones.
I like watching Peterson.
I think it's because I watched too many of the people getting owned videos, and then you became like, you're like the Christian apologist.
Frank Turek rocks college atheist and then shows you answer a question very politely.
But like the, it's presented as like the kid's head's going to get ripped off.
But I also.
Yeah, right.
Your logo, I always liked your logo because it's cross-examined and the cross, the word cross is like really hardcore, like rap core.
And then the X and examine is like, like a sword did it.
Slaughtered someone.
Drop of blood.
Drop of blood.
That's right.
So I don't know if you've ever thought about having a theme song.
Yeah, it's very heavy metal.
Super rap rap.
And we're thinking, so I wrote you a cross-examined hardcore song to go with your logo if you want to use it.
Would you like to hear it?
Can we hear it right now?
I think so.
Dan's going to try to play it for you right now.
Bring it on.
Okay.
Trying to wreck apologetical assassin.
Atheist chum's getting cross-examined.
We got something.
You got cross-eight salvage.
You're all driver since just rack nonsense.
I hate you.
We test the ten from Ignatius.
Not in your fate to be AJS.
You got Hicks, we got Coco.
He's took the new food.
Destivate became a slaughter.
God is good on moral bulker.
You got Taiwan and I Talum.
With your brain like the wizard says, good I Jamaris.
Not a good thing to be in the news.
Dockets broken, switch our fast.
And now Dr. Frank Turek.
There we go.
See it introduces you right at the end.
It's perfect, man, but it's a little bit too Beyonce-like for me.
And I don't know.
So this is like the equivalent of you go up to like an artist you like, here's some fan art that I drew.
Or you go up to a band you like, I wrote this song for you guys.
What do you think?
It's a joke.
I kept trying to pitch like a Babylon B headline where we do the hardcore cross-examined and like I would Photoshop you and like Static X or somebody you know tattoos all over you and stuff doing rap core about apologetics.
And Kyle, I don't think Kyle knew about it as much.
So I just have to like try to convince him on stuff he doesn't know about.
So I just took the opportunity since we're having you on to fulfill my dream of doing my cross-examined rap core song.
Did you make any of those lyrics though?
That's a lot of talent you got right there, Ethan.
I would actually love to see the lyric sheet for that because I think I got like four of the words down, but it was good.
There's a few.
A few samples.
Kick it with Ravi Zacharias spreading logos like a virus.
Apologetics, Tyrannosaur, Frank Turek, Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.
That's like Austrian death machine you got right there.
Is that what that was?
That's what it sounds like.
Also like you got Hitchens, we got Coco.
These tactics are going to be loco.
God is not a moral monster.
Oh, and then you got to.
Did you pronounce Kalam wrong again?
You got Darwin.
I got Calem.
Burn your brain like a witch at Salem.
Your moral basis failing.
Uppercut you through the ceiling.
Well, Frank, that's all we wanted to have you on for.
That's all we need, man.
You made my day.
Thanks for coming on.
The video version.
I've got a lot of people flowing now.
That was fabulous.
All right.
So yeah, you got your introduction.
But send me the links.
I mean, send me the lyrics.
I really want to read all the lyrics.
I'm going to make a music video out of it.
We'll have it.
By the time this airs, there will be visuals.
So I'll put all the words on there.
How much time are you going to spend on that?
Hey, I just did that this morning in my car.
I didn't want to do it in the office, so I parked in a parking lot out in the middle of nowhere and did all that into my car, in my car, in a little mic.
A laptop.
Well, all right.
Well, Frank Turek, we're here to talk to you.
And so where do we start after that?
That's what I said.
That's it.
Where do you go from there?
Yeah, I don't think we can go anywhere, man.
I think you got all the arguments in there.
You got the Calem, like you said.
It's all in there.
Yeah, Calem.
Did we get it right?
Did we get Calem right?
Because I think Greg Kochl got on my case for I said Kalam, I think.
Yeah, you pronounced it wrong the first time, if I remember right.
I think you pronounced it right correctly.
I don't know what Craig's talking about.
Did he ask you how did you come to that conclusion?
What did he ask you?
He went all Columbo around me.
He said it a different way.
I forget how he said it.
No, I think I said Calem, and then he got.
No, I said Kalam, and then he got on me.
And then I think in this verse song, I said Calem.
Yeah, rhyming with burning your brain like a witch at Salem.
Because you're burning people's brains with your facts.
It's the ambassador approach, that song right there.
It's the ambassador approach, burning your brain like a witch at Salem.
Is that what that was?
Is that what he said?
That's perfect.
All right.
So what's the stupidest question you've ever been asked?
That one.
Okay.
I know what the stupidest question he was ever asked was.
It was, do you want to hear my song?
Do you want to hear my song that I wrote?
That's the stupidest one I ever answered.
I'm just glad that you have a good sense of humor, sir.
All right.
So we want to know who wins in a fight.
Fistfight.
Weapons optional.
So you can give them weapons if you want.
Yeah.
They can work their logic into it, but it's in a ring.
All right.
So N.T. Wright versus Mike Tyson.
Neither.
Ditka.
Neither.
They just stand there.
Ditka.
Ditka.
You guys are too young for Ditka.
All right.
Yeah, I thought that was like Bupkiss or something.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Ditka.
He beat them both.
Oh, like the Chris Farley sketch?
Yeah.
Yeah, you guys are too young.
Man, you're too young.
Is that from God Bears?
Who would win?
Hurricane or God?
What if the name of the hurricane was Ditka?
Ditka versus God.
Trick question, Ditka is God.
NT Wright.
I'm familiar.
Versus Tyson?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Tyson's been actually in the ring lately.
Have you noticed?
Has he?
Yeah, it was just on the news yesterday.
Maybe I saw it on the Babylon B, but somewhere he was punching people like he was 21 years old.
But I'd give N.T. Wright an edge here because N.T. Wright's a little bit smarter.
I think he can move around and he could hit Tyson with the resurrection, which is what he's famous for.
Yeah.
The giant resurrection.
Uppercut him with that.
Well, does he wear?
Doesn't he wear it?
Does he wear like the Anglican robes?
He could probably hide some weapons and he could poop giant books around like Nightcrawler.
The robe would kind of morph.
Yeah, like the Night Crawler.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just like that.
The robe is like the blue smoke.
I don't know.
How about this one?
C.S. Lewis versus GK Chesterton.
Lewis always.
What?
Chesterton's twice the size of him.
You sit on him.
Well, that's true, but Lewis can stick and move.
He can stick and move.
Everything Lewis learned, he learned from Chesterton.
Chesterton taught him everything he knows.
Well, then, how come Lewis was a Protestant and Chesterton was a Catholic?
we're not all, you know, we all have our issues.
Lewis, Lewis any day in that one.
Hmm.
All right.
Lewis wrote more clearly than Chesterton.
Come on, you got to admit that.
That's true.
But is that always good?
If you want to be understood, I would think so.
Yeah.
There is many times we've read a Chesterton essay, and Kyle's first thing he says after we're done is, so what drug was he on when he wrote that?
That's right.
We meet and we read Chesterton, and yeah, we rate every essay on it one to ten based on how high we think Chesterton was When he wrote the particular essay, um, Lee Strobel versus the newsboy.
Any newsboys lineup you want from the OG to now?
Lee's my buddy.
And I'm doing the case for Lee Strobel here.
He would definitely take out the newsboys.
The case for Lee Strobel.
That's right.
Wouldn't you?
Should write that.
Come on.
Yeah.
I mean, he's the Lee is the man.
I mean, this is in the modern era.
This book, I think, is God right there.
I was going to ask you if you've ever read that.
No.
Case for Christ.
No, not actually.
I was going to recommend it.
Just in case you hadn't read it, I was like, hey, I know a really good apologetics book you should check out.
And I'm really impressed that you work this book into that psalm.
Yeah, I'm reading it right now, actually.
Because off of a recommendation from one of your videos, I'm currently reading, Is God a Moral Monster?
What do you think?
Is he a monster or what?
So far, he's, I love that, because a lot of those books, I feel like they get really general.
Yeah.
I like in that book, he goes very specific, like verse by verse.
And yeah, he talks about the Old Testament law.
Yeah.
And how it's kind of a transitional law.
Like it's not supposed to be like laws that are meant for all of eternity.
These aren't the greatest good kind of thing.
It's like in that culture, into the Near Eastern culture, you take those laws and you look, you compare them to that time and you see the mass improvement that they actually were upon a lot of more barbaric laws of other cultures.
Anyway, I like it.
Highly recommend it.
All the hardest stuff in the Old Testament.
And it's on Amazon Prime.
You need to have Paul Copan on your show.
You know, he's the king of puns.
Okay.
He will pun you to death.
He will pun-ish you.
I love a good pun.
Yep.
He's the man.
So I'll connect you with him.
You got to have Copan.
He's great.
All right.
We love that.
He should have been on our fight list.
How about am I going next?
It's your turn.
Eric Metaxas versus Ray Comfort.
They're both kind of little guys.
That's a good one.
I know both those guys.
I think they would both out-talk one another.
It'd be rapid fire.
That's right.
They would never get to the fight.
They would just talk about it.
This is like the featherweight division.
Is that what you're thinking?
Yeah, featherweight.
There you go.
But Eric would have a few more jokes than Ray, although they're both funny.
But do you think Ray could convert Eric to like any into punch yourself in the face religion or something?
Because he's really good at converting people.
So he's like, do you accept punching yourself in the face into your heart?
And they're like, I do.
And then they just start, they knock themselves out.
Well, I'll tell you, Ray would be more succinct than Eric because Eric writes books that are like, they take you, you know, five weeks to read.
Oh, but he could write a guy.
Yeah.
He could write a Ray Comfort biography where he dies at the end.
A Ray Comfort biography?
You think so?
I don't know.
Some spectrum.
Uh-huh.
All right.
How about a tag team one?
We've got Chuck Norris and Chris Pratt on one side.
And then we have Mr. T and Tim Tebow on the other side.
So Norris and Pratt versus Mr. T and Tim Tebow.
I think Tim Tebow would have to apologize for hitting anybody.
So I would have to go with the other side, wouldn't you?
Isn't there a Babylon B headline, Kyle, that you did on Tim Tebow?
Apologize for stealing second base or something?
Yeah.
I don't know anything about all he knows he's like the Christian football player.
Oh, Adrier is a baseball player.
Oh, and then, yeah, the one he gets pegged, he gets pegged by a pitch, and he runs, he charges the mound to offer instant forgiveness.
That's it.
That's it.
Yeah, so you'd have to go with the other side because Tim Tim's not going to fight without apologizing.
But then doesn't he really win in the end?
Ultimately, still win.
Like, this begs him more than a while.
Does he apologize to the severed head he's holding up?
Ask forgiveness.
I'm thinking, like, we need this is philosophical.
Like, what does winning really mean?
It's true.
It's like the past and the past will be first.
I get it where you're going.
Are you a Christian or something?
I got it.
I am.
William Lane Craig versus Colby the Computer.
That's an obscure Christian cartoon.
William Lane Craig loses to no man or no computer.
I chose that because he's a little machine-like himself.
Because I saw him debate Hitchens, and he was very up next to Hitchens.
He's very robotic.
Not in a mean way, but he's just so, you know, he just feels like he's got a script in his head.
He's just going.
It's amazing.
Next to anybody, Hitchens makes you feel robotic because Hitchens was just so fluid with his rhetoric.
Yeah.
And he was fun to listen to.
In fact, the first debate I ever had was with Hitchens.
And I just loved listening to him.
When he was debating me, I'm going, I just like this guy.
And of course, he had no arguments.
Yeah.
In fact, there's a difference.
If you watch a Hitchens debate, you're going to go, I like Hitchens.
If you read this transcript of a Hitchens debate, you're going to go, what was he talking about?
He's not even in the ballpark.
I mean, he started our debate, Does God Exist? talking about Mother Teresa.
I'm going, what does this have to do with whether or not God exists?
So it's the difference between rhetoric and logic.
And he's great at rhetoric, but not so good at logic.
Or was.
Hey, Kyle and Ethan, hold that thought.
We've got something to say.
That's right.
Our podcast this week is being sponsored by Faithful Counseling.
Sometimes things can get a little overwhelming.
Even though you know God's there for you, you need to talk to somebody.
It's nice to have somebody to talk to in a private environment.
They'll talk to you about depression, stress, anxiety, relationships, family conflicts, even crisis of faith issues.
They do this entirely online.
You can talk to people via text, video chat, phone call.
And you know that this person shares your Christian worldview.
And that's a big concern for people that go and get counseling.
Yeah, you don't want heretics teaching you or counseling you.
You don't want those darn atheists counseling you.
So you can go to faithfulcounseling.com/slash Babylon B to get your 10% discount.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
So, you know, you could having a crisis of faith, even are you having depression, anxiety, stress, all of that stuff?
Someone to talk to.
Someone to talk to.
You can go to faithfulcounseling.com/slash Babylon B. Faithful Counseling.com/slash Babylon B. What was that URL?
No, I'm just kidding.
You're good.
They got it.
Back to you, Kyle and Ethan.
Greg Coco versus Frank Turek.
That'll be the final fight.
Yo, Coco versus Turek.
That's a tough one.
Well, he's tactically better than me, but I have more arguments.
So I don't know.
I don't know who's going to win.
I guess we have to decide that one.
You put that on as an event.
He's got a 10th year anniversary edition of tactics, as you know.
Yeah, we had him on kind of recently.
Yeah.
And it was a lot of fun.
It better be recent.
He's getting old, man.
You better get him while he's young.
Yeah.
Are you younger than him?
So you another one thing.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Come on.
Yeah, he's not there.
Yeah.
He's got all balding and stuff.
We need to get Turek in person so we can really analyze.
Yeah, because we had him in person.
You know how much my hair is thinning?
Yeah.
Kyle, how old are you?
I'm 33.
Old enough to have to think about it.
39.
39, man.
You guys don't look it.
We look older.
All right, so let's get into some real apologetics here.
I think some people some people are wondering during this pandemic, why does God let this kind of stuff happen?
Why do we have diseases?
Why do we have cancer?
Cancer is a good one.
I think a lot of people, you've probably answered the cancer question.
Also, natural disasters.
Those things where it seems like there's not a single person.
Now, maybe in this case, somebody was just devouring bats like a madman, and that's what happened, and they're at fault.
But it seems like there are disasters that kill a lot of people that there's nobody you can point the finger at.
So, can we dive into that?
The Star Wars prequels exist.
Yeah.
So there's nobody can stop.
Where's God?
Where's God?
Sorry, everyone.
That was a serious question.
But a good question.
Good question, Ethan.
Thanks.
I'm trying.
Well, if God, why evil is the question?
Well, sometimes, in fact, I had that question at the University of Michigan State University.
I was doing the I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist presentation, and there was an atheist sitting stone-faced in the whole presentation for the whole like hour and a half, two hours.
He's stone-faced.
He didn't crack a smile once.
And I had some pretty good jokes in there.
So I knew this guy was going to be pretty aggressive during the QA.
So as soon as I asked for questions, I said, are there any questions?
And he raised his hand.
I said, yes, sir.
He said, if there is a good God, why doesn't he stop all the evil in the world?
And I said, sir, that's an excellent question.
Maybe because if he did, he might start with you or me because we do evil every day.
Whenever we talk about evil, we're always talking as if God, why don't you stop that evil over there?
Why don't you stop that person over there?
We never think of us because we do evil every day.
If God wanted to stop all the evil in the world, he could, but he might start with you and me.
In fact, our mutual friend Greg Kochl puts it this way.
He said, if God decided to stop evil at midnight tonight, would you still be alive at 1201?
And my answer is that I wouldn't be.
Yeah.
None of us would be.
God allows evil because he allows free will.
And if he allows free will, he has to open up the possibility for evil.
He gives us free will so we can love.
But evil doesn't disprove God because there would be no such thing as evil unless there was good.
And there'd be no such thing as good unless God existed because he's what we mean by the standard of good.
So evil doesn't disprove God.
It may prove there's a devil, but it doesn't disprove God because we wouldn't even know what evil was unless good existed and good wouldn't exist unless God existed.
So C.S. Lewis, who beats Chesterton in a debate every time, said that the shadows prove the sunshine, right?
You can have shadow, or you can have sunshine without shadows.
You can have good without evil, but you can't have shadows without sunshine.
You can't have evil without good.
C.S. Lewis actually stole that from a Switchfoot song.
Did he?
Yeah.
And they stole that from G.K. Chesterton.
So Chesterton said one of Chesterton's famous ones was, What's wrong with the world?
I am.
That's right.
My question is worse.
Oh, go ahead.
No, go.
You go.
Go ahead.
I'm just saying, but specifically, because it's easy to say more like, yeah, the evil of a guy of me or of any human.
But what about the evil of disease or cancer or a hurricane?
A shark NATO.
Right.
Those are natural evils.
And of course, the Christian worldview says that it all is traced back to our choice in Adam.
So if we hadn't fallen, we wouldn't be having those problems.
That way we wouldn't be dying, that's for sure.
Yeah.
Think about Jesus, though.
He does miracles in four categories.
First of all, he's sinless.
That's miraculous.
Secondly, he heals the sick.
He overcomes nature.
He calms nature and he raises the dead.
If you think about it, those are the four things we, the four problems we have as human beings.
We're sinful.
We get sick.
Nature can hurt us and we die.
And so what Jesus is doing by doing miracles in those four categories is he's saying, I'm the Messiah.
I'm the Savior.
I can heal all of those problems, those four categories of problems you have.
And they all ultimately, they all ultimately go back to the sin of Adam and the sin of Adam and Eve.
And of course, we followed.
We wouldn't have done any better than Adam and Eve either.
So that's where the fallen world comes from.
So murder hornets, they're a result of the fall.
Probably.
Yeah, well, there's nothing actually wrong with a murder hornet.
It's only bad when it stings you in the eyeball, right?
There's nothing metaphysically bad about a murder hornet for even a coronavirus.
There's a metaphysically bad about a murder hornet.
Is God a moral monk?
I'm trying to think of a good way to work murder hornets in that.
It didn't work.
Okay, well, then how about this one?
We stumped Greg Coco with this one.
What about rabbit poop?
Why do rabbits eat their own poop?
Have you ever heard this argument?
There's nutritional value in there, right?
Have you heard this argument before?
No, go ahead.
What is it?
It's an atheist argument I heard in a real debate one time.
He was talking about how we hold that nature was created by God, so therefore it should be perfect, at least at its base level.
But rabbits, they have to eat their poop.
They have to poop once, eat it, and then poop again.
So it proves that God messed up completely.
So what do you think of that?
I think it's a crappy argument.
It's actually really true.
Yeah.
Well done.
Why is it metaphysically bad to eat something that gives you nutritional value, which is not really done for rabbits?
Maybe God thinks it's funny that rabbits eat their own poop.
He's just like, hey, let's have fun with this one.
That's right.
I don't know.
But look, if creatures did not eat dung or if dung didn't turn into dirt, we'd be overrun with it.
So there's some value.
Obviously, there's value in insects eating stuff like that.
It helps keep the ecosystem going.
Yeah, we don't know everything that's going on.
That's right.
Well, speak for yourself.
Except for Kyle.
So what would it take?
How much faith would it take for you to become an atheist?
Like flying spaghetti monster appears in front of you or appears in a vision and says, I'm real.
Would you fall to your knees and believe?
Or not believe?
Believe in the flying spaghetti monster?
Well, isn't that the atheist God?
God's the atheist God.
If you believe in him, you don't believe you.
This shows you the actual silliness of some of the atheistic arguments.
You know how they say stuff like, well, you don't believe in the flying spaghetti monster.
You don't believe in Ra or Zeus and Thor.
And we go, yeah, we don't believe in those beings because there's no evidence they exist.
And we're not talking about beings inside the universe like the flying spaghetti monster or Zeus or Thor.
We're talking about the being that created the entire universe and transcends it.
They're totally totally different categories.
And this is why Dawkins and others get it all wrong when they say, I'm just another atheist.
I'm just an atheist.
I'm an atheist.
It just goes one God more than you.
Yeah, but you're ruling out the God who created everything, including you.
Zeus didn't create you, even if he exists.
I always like when they say, I don't believe in the flying spaghetti monster, but then they say they believe in multiverse theory, which means they actually do believe in a flying spaghetti monster because in one of those universes, there's got to be one.
That's right.
Was it you guys on the Babylon B that said atheist believes in every universe except the biblical one?
Was that yeah, that was my first article.
That was my first article.
Yeah, you've cited both of our first articles now.
Did your research.
Yeah, good job.
I didn't know it was your first, but I've been following you guys a long time.
It's great because through humor, you guys can get the point across in a fun way where people they might not read an article or a blog or even watch a video, but they'll look at a headline and go, oh, I got it.
It's important work you're doing, and it's fun.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
That's a nice way to describe us telling jokes on the internet, Frank.
We appreciate that.
Should we want to try to do some of our subscriber questions?
You want to save that for subscriber portion?
Subscriber portion?
Okay.
Save it for the subscriber portion.
The only thing we did is that we didn't write any real questions.
Well, I did figure how we get him going, though.
How we get him going?
Because he's getting really upset here when we mention bad atheist arguments.
Okay.
Let's do some more bad atheist arguments.
Like the flying spaghetti monster.
And we're going to need to ask you to calm down, Frank.
Because you get real fired up.
I do.
I get fired up over atheist arguments.
Atheist argument.
You know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to Google.
Oh, you atheist argument.
So you, in all your knowledge, of all the religions in the world, you pick Christianity just because you so happen to be born in America and you just think you're right.
Even though there's all those other religions, you didn't, did you go to all those churches and spend at least a year practicing every other religion before you came to this conclusion?
No, you don't have to do that.
All you have to do is figure out if theism is true.
And if theism is true, you're down to just a few choices.
Okay.
What are they?
You got Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are the big ones.
What about Mormonism?
No, they're polytheists.
You know that.
That's where you get into all the trouble with the Mormons.
That's true.
Yeah.
Everybody's a God in Mormonism.
Forgot.
I forgot.
Yeah, can we mention?
I'm playing the college student character.
I'm not sure.
Oh, you're not you?
Oh, okay.
All right.
Well, no, you don't have to.
You just got to figure out if theism is true, and then you just got to figure out which theism.
And if Jesus rose from the dead, Christian theism is true.
If he didn't rise from the dead, it's not true.
It's easy.
So, how long did you spend practicing Islam before you decided it was wrong for you?
Practicing.
You don't need to practice.
How many jihads did you go on?
Yeah, before you knew, you know what?
It's not lining up with reality.
That's right.
I got to say, make sure it's true, right?
How many Bernies in the bosoms did you have before you knew Mormonism was right?
No.
That's not, you know, a lot of times people ask me, what's your testimony?
I go, it doesn't matter.
My testimony doesn't matter.
Peter's testimony matters.
Paul's testimony matters.
You know, people who are there, it matters, but my testimony doesn't matter.
It may be interesting, but it may not, but it doesn't matter.
What matters is the evidence.
And here's what I see.
I see Christians doing this all the time.
Tell me your testimony, as if your testimony is going to be the thing that means Christianity is true.
Well, Mormons give testimonies.
Muslims give testimonies.
Scientologists give testimonies.
That doesn't tell you whether or not it's true.
The very thing that differentiates us from every other world religion is evidence, and we never use it.
Why would we not use it?
So, what do you think is some of the strongest evidence for specifically New Testament Christianity, like the strongest physical evidence for all that?
New Testament Christianity?
Well, the resurrection is the key.
If the resurrection happened, everything else falls into place.
In fact, the evidence I go through to show that the New Testament writers are telling the truth, I'll just give one line of evidence.
It all begins with the letter E, like embarrassing testimony, right?
You don't make stuff up that makes you look bad.
You might lie to make yourself look good, but you won't lie to make yourself look bad.
I mean, think about how embarrassing the disciples made themselves look or how bad they made themselves look.
I mean, Jesus calls Peter, their leader, Satan.
I mean, do you think they really made that up?
That Mark said, hey, Pete, I'm going to make this a real interesting story.
I'm going to have the Lord call you Satan.
You know, what do you think Peter would have said?
Have him call you Satan.
Look, I'm the leader here.
This doesn't look good.
Peter says, I'll never deny you.
What does he wind up doing?
He denies him three times.
And then all the disciples at the crucifixion run away.
I mean, it's like a Monty Python movie, right?
Run away.
They all run away.
And who are the brave ones?
It's the women who are the brave ones.
Now, what man is going to say that he was hiding for fear of the Jews why the women went down and discovered the empty tomb?
No man's going to say that.
If we were making it up, we wouldn't say that, would we?
It might be believable in my case.
In my case.
Well, my wife's pretty, both of our wives are pretty hardcore.
John kept saying that he beat Peter to the tomb, though.
He was very specific that he beat Peter in a foot race to the tomb.
So maybe he made that up.
Oh, yeah.
They had little things.
Yeah, right.
But embarrassing testimony would never be put in there if it hadn't really occurred.
In fact, one lady came up to me once and said, I know why Jesus appeared to the women first.
And I said, why?
And she said, because he wanted to get the story out.
Said, you know, that's an excellent point.
I hadn't thought of that before.
Because ladies will talk and men won't, you know.
But, and then think about this in Matthew 28, verse 19.
Well, that's the Great Commission.
In verse 17, well, Jesus has given them the Great Commission.
He's standing there.
All his disciples are before him where he says, Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations.
It says right there in verse 17 of his disciples, it says, Some believed, but some doubted.
He's standing right in front of them, and they're saying they doubted that it was him.
They're not making that up.
Who would make that up?
It's not a made-up story.
And then, of course, they all, or many of them died for it.
They're not making that up either.
They're not going to their deaths saying it really happened when they could have saved themselves by saying it never happened.
And to have Jews in the first century who think they're God's chosen people to invent a resurrected Jesus who claimed to be God when they thought claiming to be God was blasphemy and they didn't believe in a resurrection until the end of time, to make this whole story up and then go die for it makes absolutely no sense.
These people were there.
They saw it.
They died for it after being horribly abused.
No, they're telling the truth.
They wouldn't have invented it.
In fact, I like to put it this way: the New Testament or the resurrection did not, I like to put it one way that I can remember it.
Hang on.
It's really pithy, trust me.
The New Testament writers did not create the resurrection.
The resurrection created the New Testament writers.
Right?
Because Christianity began with an event.
It didn't begin with a book.
I mean, there were thousands of Christians before the New Testament was ever written.
Why?
Because they witnessed the resurrected Jesus.
That's why John wrote John and Paul wrote Romans and Mark wrote Mark is because they witnessed the resurrected Jesus.
It wasn't because they read about it in a book.
They were there.
That's why they wrote the books.
Other than that, there's no evidence.
What if can God make the rock, you know, the actor, the rock?
Can God make him so big that he can't lift him?
You know, that's a good question.
I like to ask, how big is the rock?
How big is the rock, Ethan?
Or God is the rock.
In real life?
Or in this scenario, he's so big.
How big is he?
He's so big, God can't pick him up.
So he would have to be like infinitely big.
Yeah.
You have it right there.
Right there.
Now we've gone into a category mistake.
You can't have an infinitely big, finite rock.
No matter how big rock is, can God choose to make something so big he can't pick it up, but he could go back if he wanted to because he's still all-powerful?
No, because any rock he can make, he can lift.
Because any rock he can make is finite.
But you can't have an infinite, finite rock.
It's like, that's just stupid.
Do you have any awesome tattoos?
Do you have any awesome tattoos?
No, negative.
Never got a tattoo.
I wanted to see the big, like, cross-examined tribal tat across your back.
Yeah.
Sad.
It's very disappointing.
I don't have a tattoo and I don't have a heavy metal theme song, but I do now.
You do now.
Yeah.
Well, we're going to take this to the subscriber portion.
Now we're going to read some questions from subscribers.
Right?
Because we're on a little bit.
Yeah, let's do it.
Time's kind of running out here.
So, yeah.
So here we go.
We'll see everybody else later.
All right.
I'm ready.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
But if you're saying that somebody has a right to marry somebody of the same sex, by what standard are you making that judgment?
Because if there's no God, there's no right to anything.
You become president.
What's the very first thing you do?
Whatever Biden said.
The thing.
The thing.
Oh, yeah.
Create a guy.
All right.
So here we are with questions from you, our beloved subscribers.
Right?
But Jesus is the New Testament seems to say get them the name.
That's why we risk all to get people the gospel.
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